World airlines face $10 billion in immediate revenue losses and extra costs due to the terror attacks in the US, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
William Gaillard, spokesman for the body whose member carriers include all major airlines, also said that the industry could be facing record losses this year in the wake of Tuesday's attacks.
About 4,000 of the world's 12,000 commercial airliners have been grounded since four commercial jets were hijacked in the morning attacks. US air space has been essentially closed since then and will only reopen to commercial traffic on a case-by-case basis later today.
The US market is worth about $1 billion per day, according to IATA. But the slowdown on Canadian and Mexican markets as well as in transPacific and transAtlantic traffic must also be taken into account.
'This is a ballpark figure, but we could be talking about immediate losses of $10 billion this week alone. There could be a ripple effect, too,' Gaillard said.
'A week ago we were talking about losses of about $2.8 billion dollars on international scheduled traffic this year. There is no doubt it is going to be more,' he added. 'And if we add US domestic to that which is a big chunk of the whole thing, we could be facing record losses. This would be the first time since 1994,' Gaillard said.
The IATA annual figures cover only international scheduled flights and do not include the US domestic market.
The world's airlines suffered heavy losses in the period of 1990-94. The worst year was after the 1991 Gulf War, with IATA airlines reporting combined losses of $7.5 billion in 1992, the spokesman said.
IATA has strongly condemned the attacks by suicide hijackers who flew the commerical aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington. It has called an emergency meeting of its security committee, likely to be held in Montreal next week, to discuss how best to prevent this new form of hijacking, he said.
