Oneworld's governing board has named Qatar Airways group chief executive Akbar Al Baker as new chairman of the alliance. He succeeds Qantas chief Alan Joyce in the role. "I look forward to serving as chairman of the governing board and working with our alliance partners, Oneworld CEO Rob Gurney and the Oneworld team to provide more global connectivity, a seamless travel experience and more valuable loyalty offerings for our passengers," states Al Baker. He notes that Oneworld has "continued to expand since Covid-19 emerged, with the addition of two new members in Alaska Airlines and Royal Air Maroc". Qatar Airways has "enhanced bilateral relations with fellow Oneworld members in the past 18 months", adds Al Baker, who has led the Middle Eastern carrier since its launch in 1997.

Eurocontrol projects that the number of flights in Europe will not return to 2019 levels until 2025, and possibly as late as 2029. In a four-year forecast, the air traffic manager presents three scenarios for how traffic levels will recover in the coming years. In the most optimistic scenario, the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines is largely completed in Europe this summer, allowing travel restrictions to be lifted and even some long-haul travel to return by year-end, leading to a full traffic recovery by 2024. However, under the group's main forecast, delays in the vaccine rollout and lingering travel restrictions push a full recovery back to 2025. Alternatively, persistent Covid-19 infections that flare up for several more years could delay a full traffic recovery until 2029. "The situation remains very challenging for European aviation," states Eurocontrol director general Eamonn Brennan. "We're heading into summer 2021 and most restrictions are still in place despite encouraging progress on the vaccination front. So while we are anticipating an uptick in summer traffic, our most likely medium-term scenario envisages a co-ordinated lifting of restrictions by Q1 2022 between regions, which facilitates more long-haul travel." He adds: "We'll probably have around 50% of 2019 traffic for all of 2021 (5.5 million flights). By the end of next year, traffic will only have recovered to 72% of 2019 levels, and will only get back to close to where we were pre-pandemic by 2025."
Eurocontrol has slightly increased its forecasts for its optimistic and central scenarios since its last publication in November 2020, but lowered them for its most pessimistic scenario, on the threat of lingering infections. The air traffic manager adds that the level of support provided to the aviation industry and to allow passengers to feel confident in the skies again will have a large impact on the speed of recovery. In addition, it notes that significant risks to its forecasts remain. These include the possibility of further Brexit-related disruption, economic turmoil, volatility in oil and fuel prices, as well as political change, terrorism and natural disasters.

EasyJet has lowered its expectations for the early summer season and now plans to operate just 15% of 2019 capacity in the three months to end-June, down from a projection of 20% last month. Announcing its results for the six months to end-March, the UK low-cost carrier says it now envisages ramping up its services from "June onwards", as fluctuating travel restrictions are pushing consumers to book even closer to the date of travel, a dynamic that has been evident throughout the pandemic. Changing travel restrictions risk hurting load factors into the summer, as EasyJet tries to juggle its capacity through adding and cancelling services in line with surging or collapsing demand. However, the airline does see strong pent-up demand for leisure travel emerging as the summer progresses, and is ready to hike its capacity to 90% of its current fleet should bookings lift off. It cites its rapid response to the release of the UK 'green list', allocating an additional 105,000 seats earlier this month. "With leisure travel taking off in the UK again earlier this week where we are the largest operator to green-list countries, and with so many European governments easing restrictions to open up travel again, we are ready to significantly ramp up our flying for the summer with a view to maximising the opportunities we see in Europe," states chief executive Johan Lundgren. "We have the ability to flex up quickly to operate 90% of our current fleet over the peak summer period to match demand." He adds that the carrier has undergone a major restructuring and cost-reduction programme over the past six months that has enabled it to manage its cash burn better than expectations. Passenger numbers declined by 89% in the winter season, to just 4.1 million. Seat capacity was cut 85% to 6.4 million, just 14% of the level of its first half in 2019, while load factor fell to 63.7%. Revenue declined 90% to £240 million ($339 million), and headline losses before tax rose to £701 million, from £193 million in the same period a year earlier. Investment firm Davy comments that the results are in line with expectations, but notes that EasyJet "is very dependent on peak summer booking". It expects the carrier to ramp up to around 70% of full fleet operations over the summer, rather than the 90% maximum cited by the carrier.