Post-COVID-19 Scenarios of Global Airline Traffic until 2040 That Reflect Airport Capacity Constraints and Mitigation Strategies

Although there has been an unprecedented decline in traffic volume due to the COVID-19 crisis, robust growth in global demand for air transport services in the past means that air traffic is expected to recover in the long term. While capacity constraints are currently not a major topic at airports due to the extremely low levels of traffic, there is growing evidence to suggest that important nodes of the worldwide airport network will struggle to deal with capacity constraints after the recovery. The objectives of this research were therefore as follows: to elaborate long-term global passenger and flight volume scenarios in a post-COVID-19 world; to conduct an empirical and model-based analysis of the impact of limited airport capacity on the future development of air traffic in these scenarios; and to derive general strategies for mitigating capacity constraints at certain international airports. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to present a model-based scenario analysis of the long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the capacity situation for airports. Our results indicate that once the pandemic is over, the capacity crunch will remain on the airports’ agenda for some time.