The latest assessments of the influence of the pandemic on air transport show a considerable decline given that a large part of the fleets or national and foreign airlines has been grounded. According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Moldova, almost 507,000 passages had been transported in the first six months of this year, a decline of 62.3% compared with the corresponding period of 2019, when 1,343,938 passengers were conveyed, IPN reports.

In January-February this year, there were transported 384,881 passengers. This is approximately 76% of the passenger traffic for the first six months of the year, up 7.5% on the corresponding period last year.

Since March, when all the regular passenger flights were suspended, the Chisinau International Airport started to operate cargo flights and charter flights, primarily in order to enable the authorities of Moldova and other states to evacuate the citizens who got stuck in Moldova.

In such conditions, passenger air traffic decreased considerably. The number of passengers transported in March-June came to slightly over 122,000, a decrease of 87.6% on the same period last year.

With the selective resumption of regular flights at the Chisinau International Airport, the passenger air traffic in June grew slightly.

In the first quarter of this year, 474,634 passengers were conveyed by regular flights, while 32,296 by charter flights.

The passengers chose primarily the Chisinau-Moscow-Chisinau flight – 109,424 passengers (-61.6% on the first quarter of 2019), Chisinau-London-Chisinau – 47,361 (-57.3%), Chisinau-Istanbul-Chisinau – 32,691 (-62.8%) etc.

The COVID-19 pandemic generated the first global slump of the aviation sector since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, causing damage of over US$30 billion to airlines.