The planemaker Airbus has warned that the aviation industry could take as long as five years to recover to the levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic, as customers such as British Airways try to secure their survival by cutting thousands of jobs.

The Airbus chief executive, Guillaume Faury, warned on Wednesday that it could take “three to five years” for passengers to be as willing to fly as before the crisis.

Faury said: “We are now in the midst of the gravest crisis the aerospace industry has ever known.”