The aviation industry suffered a traffic collapse in March and April 2020 due to the expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Two years into the crisis, the recovery has varied from region to region, but only a handful of countries and airlines have completely rebounded from it. So, what can aviation learn from the past two years? Let’s investigate further.

More collaboration, better communication

Few industries are truly global in a similar way to aviation. The aviation industry requires international consensus, rules, frameworks, and collaboration to move forward, now more than ever.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted airlines, airports, control traffic providers, aircraft and engines manufacturers, and many more supply chain members worldwide. If we talk only about airlines, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) believes carriers will lose about US$11.6 billion in 2022. Nonetheless, that number could be higher assuming the oil price spike and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continue.

When the COVID-19 went global in March and April 2020, the governments quickly shut down their borders and imposed severe travel restrictions. These decisions hampered the airline industry, forcing them to ground fleets, downsize their workforces, and sustain billionaire losses.

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The airline industry is expected to lose over US$11 billion in 2022. Photo: Getty Images.

The airline industry proved to be resilient and has moved forward. Some carriers received help from their governments (particularly in North America and Europe), while others had to find creative ways to survive (for instance, LATAM, Aeromexico, and Avianca’s Chapter 11 processes).

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While the worst is already behind us, the aviation industry has learned it has to be prepared to face another similar crisis. Fabio Rabbani, Regional Director for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in South America, recently said the world needs to show more solidarity and compromise.

“It is essential to establish a robust framework to avoid taking similar approaches to the ones governments took at the beginning of the pandemic if a similar event occurs in the future.”

In this regard, communication is key. There has to be an open channel for discussion and collaboration between the public and private sectors. ICAO introduced the Council Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART) but has had mixed results.

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Some countries are easing up travel restrictions. Photo: Getty Images.

The crisis at the moment

Governments and airlines worldwide must collaborate to avoid repeating the same mistakes from the past.

Nevertheless, that has proved to be challenging. From the airline industry perspective, the ease of travel restrictions worldwide is very welcomed, but there’s still work to be done.

Certain countries maintain strict travel restrictions. From China’s zero-COVID strategy, which has kept the airline industry in trouble, to Chile’s several layers of requirements for international travel and EU’s travel restrictions applying within the Schengen area, the crisis is still there.

A few weeks ago, Rafael Schvartzman, IATA’s Regional Vice President for Europe, said,

“March 11 marks exactly two years since the WHO announced COVID-19 was a global pandemic. In that time, we have seen increasing evidence that border restrictions are ineffective.”

Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI Europe, added,

“The independent research and modeling published today show that governments can lift restrictions with confidence – both for today and for any future variants of concern. Travel restrictions have proven to be a blunt instrument with little to no impact on virus transmission. Removing all COVID-19 restrictions will finally fully restore the freedom to travel.”

The progress has been slow, but there is some. Latin America, for example, already has several countries that have dropped their travel restrictions to a minimum. A few of them are Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Europe also has a few examples, like the UK, Iceland, Ireland, and Norway.

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Addressing climate change will be the airline industry's biggest challenge ever. Photo: Getty Images

The crisis of the future

Putting behind the COVID-19 crisis will not mean the end of the challenges for the airline industry. Climate change is the next challenge for the industry, and perhaps a bigger one.

The year 2050 is just around the corner in terms of aviation planning, and the airline industry has pledged to be carbon net-zero by that year. The whole industry is on the clock, developing scalable sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), hydrogen and electric technology, offsetting CO2 emissions, and more.

Some governments are also addressing the subject and are looking to push the sustainability goals, address SAF production, and more.

By 2050, the airline industry will look back at the first half of the century and see that COVID-19 wasn’t the biggest challenge; instead, the biggest challenge was the decarbonization of the industry, said Roberto Alvo, LATAM Airlines Group general director.

What do you think? What other lessons the airline industry has to learn from the current crisis. Let us know in the comments below.