The novel coronavirus pandemic has brought a serious halt in the international aviation industry. 

An online seminar entitled "COVID-19 The Impact on Aviation – the view from Asia" was held last week by Airline Economics. According to Peter Morris, chief economist for Cirium, a global travel and data analysis giant, "the number of scheduled flights in the global aviation industry has been greatly reduced. However, despite a 94 percent drop in seats in Europe and a 63 percent drop in North America, the current 47 percent drop in seats in Asia is lower than in Europe and North America, compared with last year."

According to Cirium's monitoring database, the number of global flights increased by 4 percent year-on-year in January, followed by a decline and then a complete collapse. Flights in China and Asia were first hit in February, then spread around the world as a result of the outbreak.

International scheduled flights to and from China between January 1 to March 29 were down 58 percent with only 116,187 outbound flights out of 269,515 originally scheduled. Total international flights impacted this period equates to 153,328 flights, to and from China.

With some Asian countries experiencing the worst situation in the crisis, Asia and China have a very limited capacity recovery. 

"Currently, the flight cancellation rate is still very high, but since the beginning of March, the actual number of flights in China has picked up slightly," Morris said.

The COVID-19 outbreak has put the 10 trillion U.S. dollars tourism business on hold for at least three to six months. It is affecting the whole supply chain and booking cycle and leading to the exhaustion of revenue.

"International Air Transport Association (IATA) now sees that the impact of the crisis on passenger revenue in 2020 is as high as 314 billion U.S. dollars, about 55 percent of its initial forecast for 2020," Morris said.