While the view from the 14th floor across the sunny Bosphorus to the Marmara Sea was clear yesterday, down in the bunker of the Istanbul hotel's conference room there was little to dispel the gloom.

More than 1,000 executives and officials from the global airline industry, gathered for the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association, the sector's biggest get-together of the year, were in agreement that the outlook was bleak.