The airline industry is never going to get back to the way it was before coronavirus, the former chief executive of Aer Lingus and British Airways-owner IAG warned today.
Willie Walsh said the industry will be smaller but more efficient in the future. "It's never going to get back to the way it was," Willie Walsh, who retired as IAG CEO earlier this month, said in an online interview with Eurocontrol.
Looking five years ahead, Walsh forecast it would be a smaller industry and there would be fewer players. Most of the consolidation would initially come through failures, he said, as he also predicted that Covid-19 would make airlines more resilient. "Most airlines are restructuring in a very positive way: they're going to be more