ALL OF THE world's major airlines practise crisis management as a matter of course. Technical troubles on board aircraft, accidents due to pilot error or extremes of weather, even terrorist hijackings - there are thousands of things that could go wrong during the course of a scheduled flight and for which the airlines prepare endlessly.
The co-ordinated hijackings and crashes of four airliners in the United States, which culminated in the destruction of New York's landmark World Trade Centre twin towers and the loss of possibly thousands of lives, combined, however, to make a disaster unparalleled in the history of commercial aviation.
The world's transport industry could make no allowance for the events seen on Tuesday, and the attacks have plunged the world's air transport industry into chaos and financial uncertainty.
'This has become a nightmare scenario for the industry,' said Philip Wickham, an aviation analyst at ING Barings in Hong Kong. 'Demand for air travel is already weak due to the global slowdown. I want to stress that airlines are equities that do not perform during times of hostilities.'
The biggest single question for the world's major airlines will be whether passengers overcome their fears and return to air travel in numbers.
If the answer is no, the leading carriers could suffer huge financial losses.
