Willie Walsh, the director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), has told the industry to prepare for constraints on airline capacity until 2025.
Speaking with Reuters at a conference in Dublin, Ireland, the IATA boss said that the rest of 2023 will also be labored.
Walsh blames delays to new aircraft deliveries and a lack of spare parts available to deal with demand.
“I can’t see anything really improving or significantly improving probably until 2025 at the earliest and it may even go beyond that,” Walsh told Reuters.
While Boeing and Airbus have both been beset with issues in delivering jets to its customers, Walsh also revealed that airlines are having difficulties finding parts, particularly for engines.
“It means capacity will be slightly lower than the industry had forecast,” Walsh said.
Airbus within the last few days issued a warning to customers about potential delivery delays of the A320neo family aircraft, including the largest variant, the A321neo.
Sources familiar with the matter said that some A320neo family aircraft deliveries could be delayed by up to three months, affecting hundreds of aircraft of the type.
However, the manufacturer affirmed its production targets for 2024 and beyond.
A newly discovered issue with the 737 MAX could also force Boeing to rework hundreds of aircraft of the type and potentially suspend new deliveries of the 737 MAX for a time.
The issue was discovered by Spirit AeroSystems, which notified Boeing about a problem that a “non-standard manufacturing process” was used when joining the aft fuselage and the vertical tail with two fittings of certain 737 MAX-7, MAX-8, MAX-8-200, and the P-8 Poseidon, which is based on the 737 NextGeneration (NG). The 737 MAX-9 is not affected.
