London-based global management consulting firm, Bain & Company, reported in its first quarter air travel forecast for 2025, that annual air travel demand figures have recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

The company’s air traffic forecast was launched in May 2020 as a response to pandemic uncertainties, but has evolved to cover other key factors, including macroeconomic growth, levels of disposable income, and carbon mitigation costs.

While it was initially meant to forecast solely for the pandemic, Bain & Company has extended its air travel forecast to continue through the end of the decade, updating its predictions regularly.

The insights for the end of the first quarter of 2025 reveal that annual air travel demand has surpassed the 2019 total, as measured by revenue passenger kilometres (RPK).

It also noted that despite a return to pre-pandemic levels, the CO2 mitigation costs, and inflation pressures would dampen the aviation demand outlook, potentially acting as contributing factors for the regional and country forecast changes.

The 2024 travel demand was in line with expectations, reaching 102.6% of 2019 value. By 2030, global RPK figures are anticipated to reach 11.3 trillion in the base scenario, which would be 136% of 2019 volume.

The US and Mexico’s domestic markets were weaker than expected, lowering North America’s interregional travel demand outlook by 2% compared to the previous quarter. That’s equivalent to a 2.3 billion revenue decrease at current yield.

Outlook on travel demand between Europe and North America increased by approximately 3.5%, a $1 billion revenue increase. Those results can be largely attributed to the surge in recent demands for key routes between the continents, which exceed prediction expectations.

In Asia, Bain & Company continues to anticipate significant intraregional demand growth, predicting a 53% increase from 2019 to 2030.

As for country-specific results, the US is positioned to surpass the UK as the world’s largest market for outbound international travel by 2030, due to an expected increase of 21 million travellers from 2024 to 2030.

China will follow close behind, with an increase of 26 million travellers putting in on track to reclaims its position as third-largest outbound travel market by 2030, after it fell to seventh place in 2024.

India is also on a major growth trajectory, expected to rise to ninth largest outbound travel market with particular gains in the long-haul travel sector.

By 2030, Europe is expected to continue claiming several of the top short-haul outbound markets, with the UK forecasted at 69 million short-haul outbound travellers. Germany is projected to follow suit with 47 million, as well as Spain with 40 million.

The complete Bain and Company travel report is available online here.