The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), in its latest economic impact analysis of Covid-19, confirmed that international passenger traffic suffered a dramatic sixty per cent drop over 2020, bringing air travel totals back to 2003 levels.

It expects any improvement in the global picture only by the second quarter of 2021, though this will still be subject to the effectiveness of pandemic management and vaccination roll-out.

The ICAO reports that as seat capacity fell by 50pc last year, passenger totals dropped by 60pc with just 1.8 billion passengers taking to the air during the first year of the pandemic, compared to 4.5 billion in 2019.