The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major economic and societal disruption. Civil aviation has been severely impacted. Travel bans and restrictions across the globe have caused a substantial decrease in air traffic demand and thousands of flights have been cancelled worldwide as the virus continues to spread.

Key findings:

• COVID19 related cuts to commercial air traffic has already resulted in approximately a 10.3 Mt reduction in global CO2 emissions over February and March 2020.
• International Air Transport Association (IATA) now projects a 38% cut to air travel in 2020 which equates to a 352.7 Mt fall in global civil aviation emissions compared to 2019, and a 8.8 Mt CO2 fall in Australian aviation emissions compared to 2019 (37% decrease).
• Emissions from Australian commercial aviation could decrease by up to 13.2Mt CO2 in 2020 (56% decrease from 2019) under an extreme scenario of continual grounding of most Qantas and Virgin planes for 9 months.
• Business travel may not rebound to 2019 levels, given the systemic shift to online conferencing and communication and weakened corporate budgets post-COVID19.
• Under the UN deal on international aviation emissions, major airlines have committed to carbon neutrality using 2020 as the baseline year, which could end up as a record low year for emissions.