Philip Goh, International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Regional Vice President for Asia Pacific spoke with Channel News Asia (CNA) to discuss the aviation industry’s current recovery figure and how’s the region is lagging behind other regions. According to Goh, Asia Pacific is falling behind primarily because it opened borders only six months later than the West and secondly, due to China’s zero-COVID policy.

“A particular concern, of course, is skilled labour. It takes time to train people,” he said. In customer service, for instance, it takes time and experience to learn how to handle people, he said.

If resources like manpower cannot keep pace, airlines will have limitations as to how much capacity they can put back, he said.

“As long as capacity cannot revert to normal then you will continue to probably face high load factors, maybe high airfares,” he said.

“So hopefully, airlines … airports are able to find the resources they need to ramp up so that they can staff their operations adequately.”

Check out CNA’s full coverage in the video below.

Source: Channel News Asia

You may also check our Terms and Conditions for our Content Policy.