The global aviation industry will recover and grow again despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said. The aviation industry is facing an unprecedented shock from the COVID-19 pandemic, the speed and scale of which have not been seen in more than a century. “From where we stand today, we believe it will take two to three years for air travel to return to 2019 levels, and it will be a few years beyond that for the industry to return to long-term growth trends,” Deal told Xinhua in an interview in June.

“However, this is a very resilient industry that will recover and grow again,” Deal said. He argued that the fundamentals that have fuelled air travel globally were still in place, and with a rising middle class in many countries, ongoing innovation in passenger and cargo service and the greater availability of affordable airfares, the long-term outlook for commercial aviation continues to be strong.