Avalon ‘doing well’

AVALON Airport will emerge from the coronavirus a stronger and better airport, with its boss confident its growing suite of international routes will return next year.

Chief executive officer Justin Giddings agreed with an International Air Transport Association (IATA) report that it will take years until longhaul travel recovered to precoronavirus levels, but said Australia and Avalon would recover more quickly than other countries and airports.

“Australia will recover quickly — we are an island nation and air travel is essential,” Mr Giddings said.

International Air Transport Association chief executive Alexandre de Juniac told the ABC last week that international travel would resume “later” than previously thought.

“We have published today a new forecast about the potential recovery of the air traffic, and what we see is that things should come back to normal in 2023, which is later than our previous forecast,” Mr de Juniac said

Mr de Juniac said the industry would need to be “restarted” at a domestic level.

“At the end of 2020, the traffic should be between 50 to 55 per cent of the same level that was in place in 2019,” Mr de Juniac said.

His comments come after Australia’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, said there was “no clear road map” to reopening international travel.

Mr Giddings said Avalon’s route to Malaysia would be likely to restart more quickly than other flight paths. He predicted flights to China would be impacted quite badly and would be unlikely to return to pre-coronavirus levels.

“On the whole Avalon is doing really well, we are redeploying staff,” Mr Giddings said.

“It is an absolutely headache, but we will get through this.”

He said Avalon Airport had retained the vast majority of its 35 full-time and 45 casual workers.

Mr Giddings also recently said New Zealand was “an opportunity” and one of the most requested flight paths from travellers in the region.

“New Zealand would be an awesome destination and it is one of the most requested destinations we have,” Mr Giddings said.

with HERALD SUN