A Xiamen Airlines passenger plane lands at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport. Photo: Xinhua

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Tuesday that the COVID-19 crisis will see airline passenger revenues slashed by $314 billion in 2020, a 55 percent reduction compared to 2019.

It also said the full-year passenger demand, for both domestic and international, is expected to be down 48 percent compared to 2019.

"In other words, half our business disappears. That's catastrophic," warned Alexandre de Juniac, IATA's director general and CEO.

His comments come against the backdrop of some restrictions on international travel being extended beyond the initial three months amid the epidemic outbreak around the world.

Travel restrictions will deepen the impact of a drop in demand for travel. The most severe impact is expected to be in the second quarter of this year, IATA said.

As of early April, the number of flights globally was down 80 percent compared to 2019 in large part owing to severe travel restrictions imposed by governments to fight the spread of the virus.

Domestic markets could still see the start of an upturn in demand beginning in the third quarter in the first stage of lifting travel restrictions. International markets, however, will be slower to resume as it appears likely that governments will retain these travel restrictions longer, it explained.

"The industry's outlook grows darker by the day. The scale of the crisis makes a sharp V-shaped recovery unlikely. Realistically, it will be a U-shaped recovery with domestic travel coming back faster than the international market," de Juniac said.

IATA said earlier that global passenger traffic data for February fell 14.1 percent compared to February 2019. February capacity (available seat kilometers or ASKs) fell 8.7 percent as airlines scrambled to trim capacity in line with plunging traffic, and load factor fell 4.8 percentage points to 75.9 percent.