Issue Summary

As IATA discussed in detail last week, the world’s airline industry enters the 2020s with a 10-year profit streak. But as 2019 again reaffirmed, profits are increasingly concentrated among the sector’s largest intercontinental airlines, together with its strongest low-cost carriers. Left out is a long tail of smaller and less efficient carriers unable to cope with the rigors of geopolitical volatility, subdued economic growth, intense competition, currency volatility, and other pressures. Indeed, 2019 was both a prosperous year for many and a year of death and distress for others. Read this week's issue to see what our take on the…