The global aviation industry will take at least two years to recover from the coronavirus pandemic and for mass travel to return, Singapore’s Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung has said, stressing the importance of developing a widely available and effective vaccine to help countries open their borders.
"When a vaccine is widely available around the world and people gain confidence to travel again and visit other countries, then we will have aviation back on its feet, almost fully,” Ong said in an interview. "How long that will that take, I can’t make a guess, I would say minimally a couple of years.”
Singapore has to "find ways to try to revive” the aviation sector, the minister said, adding that the city-state’s testing capacity is now around 30,000 a day and may rise to 40,000 by November and probably further after then. A balance needs to be struck between travel and epidemic control, Ong said.