Insurers and ECAs at Airline Economics’ 2024 Growth Frontiers Dublin conference supported finance panel for the Americas believe 2024 to be a good year. Despite the headwinds this year presents, the panellists believe the aviation industry will overcome the challenges.
With conflict in Middle East and Russia, tensions rising with China relations, and Red Sea attacks causing concern in regard to cargo, the aviation industry is seeing a concern surrounding geopolitical issues affecting the sector. “There’s always something going on somewhere in the world that’s causing some concern,” said Aircraft Financing Solutions Group managing director Bob Roy. “So at a high level, yes, there’s some of that going on. It might be at a heightened level today, in comparison to the recent past, but I think that it’s something that can be managed.”
Roy, in fact, voiced his optimism even amongst the headwinds. He said: “I also think that there’s a lot of opportunities there. Some people may shy away from certain regions of the world because of these concerns over geopolitical issues. And that’s an opportunity for some of us to come in and do transactions that we might not otherwise do.”
He added that despite production issues with “significant delays so aircraft in 2024 might shift into 2025” and the GTF engine issues are “putting a lot of uncertainty into when some of these aeroplanes are delivered.”
AFIC managing director Bob Morin said: “I’m not sure that we have that many headwinds ... you could say we have some tailwinds. But if I had to find a headwind, I think it would be the supply chain.”
Morin added: “We are waiting for Boeing to ramp up that production. We were a little disappointed to see the news last week that the FAA is slowed down that ramp up. We were thinking 2024 was actually going to be a very good year leading to a great year 2025. I think we've had to moderate our 2024 expectations just due to the slower ramp.”
Brazilian Development Bank head of export credit department Andre Taveira said that the Covid pandemic brought a lot of lessons to the aviation industry and that he was confident 2024 would be a “robust year”.
Roy said: “In terms of some of the other I think what you might consider to be the headwinds, those are really just the normal things that airline treasures should be dealing with on a regular basis that they've had not had to deal with in the last 10 years.” He added that he believed 2024 to be a “good year”.
Morin concurred with the optimistic sentiment of the panel: “Overall, I do see a lot of opportunity and headwinds can present opportunities.”