Deliveries of ATR turboprops barely reached double figures last year as the joint-venture manufacturer saw demand slump due to the pandemic. In all, the airframer shipped just 10 aircraft in 2020 – with nine of those handed over in the final quarter. That marks a sharp decline on the 68 units it delivered in 2019. The total is revealed in the full-year accounts of Leonardo, a 50% shareholder in ATR alongside Airbus. Leonardo builds fuselages for the ATR 42-600 and ATR 72-600 at plants in the south of Italy, shipping them to Toulouse in France for final assembly. Just 26 fuselages were delivered to the joint venture in 2020, down from 68 a year earlier. Leonardo does not expect a significant improvement in ATR’s performance this year either: deliveries will be “far below” pre-Covid levels, it says. Production cuts at Airbus and, more significantly, Boeing, combined to hammer the company’s aerostructures unit. Leonardo is responsible for two composite fuselage barrels and the horizontal stabiliser on the latter’s 787: last year it shipped 105 fuselage sections and 72 stabilisers against 164 fuselages and 92 stabilisers in 2019. Revenues in the division fell to €820 million ($976 million) from €1.1 billion a year earlier. EBITA losses widened to €86 million from €11 million in 2019. As a result of forecast lower medium-term demand for civil aircraft, Leonardo is taking action to address the impact on its aerostructures business, including the “early retirement” of around 500 employees in the division.

Qantas has launched its first customer trial of the CommonPass digital health application on its international repatriation flight to Darwin, Australia from Frankfurt, Germany. The smartphone application allows passengers to access their Covid-19 test results and immunisation records from their healthcare provider. The move follows a successful trial with crew in February and will offer safe access to border or health officials to verify test results. The Australian carrier says it is also assessing IATA's Travel Pass application and the latest development comes as part of its plan to resume safe international travel from 31 October.

The number of passengers travelling by air in Africa will not return to 2019 levels until at least the start of 2024 because of the lengthy rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine, the leader of airline association AFRAA has warned. During the first of a series of AFRAA webinars, secretary general Abderahmane Berthe noted that with only 20% of the continent's population to be vaccinated by the end of 2021, herd immunity – which occurs when at least 60% of the population have been inoculated – will not be reached until at least two or three years' time. This means it is unlikely that air traffic levels will return to 2019 levels "until the end of 2023", and possibly longer, says Berthe. He argues that governments "need to accelerate the vaccination of African citizens in order to remove travel restrictions and allow air travel to come back as soon as possible". The rollout of the vaccine risks being delayed in the continent by a lack of cold storage facilities at airports, he notes. AFRAA's director of government, legal and industry affairs Rafael Kuuchi asserts that the crisis has demonstrated the need for Africa to develop its own airlines instead of relying on foreign carriers for connectivity, as non-African airlines largely disappeared from the continent at the start of the pandemic. Berthe agrees: "All of us, we remember that at the beginning of Covid it was airline cargo operations which were transporting medical supplier… Today we are talking about airlines transporting vaccines." He adds: "We have realised that air transport is very very key in Africa for connectivity because land means of transport are very weak." Even before Covid-19, many local carriers were struggling as a result of high fuel prices, lack of infrastructure, fragmented air traffic markets, and a proliferation of airlines which was hindering profitability. "Airlines need to be agile, adapt, rethink their business models, put in place some cost management, and develop new business like cargo operations. Airlines can really adapt to this situation." says Berthe. "It's a kind of revolution." He adds that pan-African initiatives are being undertaken to liberalise markets (including the Single African Air Transport Market and the African Continental Free Trade Area), pool airline resources and enhance co-operation, while huge safety-performance gains made in recent years have been maintained.