COVID-19 pandemic and air transportation: Successfully navigating the paper hurricane

Sun, Xiaoqian; Wandelt, Sebastian; Zheng, Changhong; Zhang, Anming

doi:10.1016/j.jairtraman.2021.102062

Cited by 199 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 133 publications

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“…The industry’s high operating leverage makes its profits very sensitive to fluctuations in air-traffic demand. Furthermore, air transport demand is occasionally disrupted by external shocks such as global economic slowdowns (Chen et al, 2017 ; Sadi & Henderson, 2000 ), epidemics (Dube et al, 2021 ; Sun et al, 2021 ), natural disasters (Janić, 2019 ), and terrorism (Corbet et al, 2019 ; Goodrich, 2002 ; Inglada & Rey, 2004 ; Mitra et al, 2018 ). When disruptions occur, airlines’ existing financial commitments remain despite decreased revenues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of the Operational Performance and Profitability of the U.S. Airlines

Huang

Hsu

Collar

2021

JGBC

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Since 2008, a series of mega-mergers has dramatically changed the U.S. airline industry. Despite the presence of fewer airlines in the market, the competition remains intense, which forces airlines to continually search for ways to increase their efficiency to maintain survival and financial sustainability. To evaluate airline performance and disentangle the causes of inefficiency, this paper applied a two-stage network data envelopment analysis approach and a truncated regression to investigate the performance of nine U.S.-based airlines from 2015 to 2019. Our empirical results reveal that during the sample period, airlines’ operating efficiency steadily improved, but the efficiency in the profitability stage stagnated. Therefore, strategic resource allocations are needed for airlines to see further advances in their overall efficiency. On average, airlines operating in the low-cost business model yielded higher efficiency scores than their peers operating in the full-service framework. While an airline’s size, measured in terms of total assets, has a positive influence on operating efficiency, a larger number of full-time employee equivalents hinders efficiency outcomes, which indicates the importance of enhancing labor efficiency among carriers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of the Operational Performance and Profitability of the U.S. Airlines

Huang

Hsu

Collar

2021

JGBC

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“…The measures taken by airports can be evaluated independently and studied based on their respective efficacy and merit in fighting the pandemic, similarly to what has been done for items such as screening measures ( Quilty et al, 2020 ). A wide variety of measures has been proposed and discussed in literature ( Sun et al, 2021 ); ( Dube et al, 2021 , Alonso Tabares, 2021 , Bielecki et al, 2021 ) , even the ACI’s response guidelines provide details on some measures ( Airports Council International (ACI), 2009 ). The measures are virtually uncountable and every week reports of additional steps and adjustments surface—many are new and may not necessarily be evidence-based.…”

Section: Challenges Resulting From Response Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The initial recovery in each country and even at each airport was faced with several challenges including uncoordinated policy measures across airports, volatile measures, uncertain decision making and lack of robust recovery plans ( Sun et al, 2021 ). For example, delays in putting the health screening and quarantine measures in place put the local population and airport staff at risk of being infected.…”

Section: Covid-19 Impacts On the Civil Aviation Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Milne and Kelly ( Milne and Kelly, 2014 ) highlighted how the boarding speed has slowed from 20 passengers per minute in 1970 to 9 passengers per minute in 1998. The process remains one of the crucial hot-spots during air travel and continues to pose the higher risk of human-to-human COVID-19 exposure ( Sun et al, 2021 ). The mode of processing passengers at the gate is largely in the hands of the airline and based on the boarding method used, several of which exist and have been recommended to minimize the risk of disease spread, e.g.…”

Section: Modes Of Respondingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Airport pandemic response: An assessment of impacts and strategies after one year with COVID-19

Arora¹,

Tuchen²,

Nazemi³

et al. 2021

Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented crisis for the air transportation industry, affecting millions of aviation users and stakeholders. As the aviation sector has faced disease outbreaks and extreme events before—albeit not at the same scale—and will, in all likelihood, face them again, we provide an assessment in this study that a) gives an overview of the effects of the pandemic, b) categorizes the response mechanisms that were observed, and c) proposes a framework for a coordinated global response to future disease outbreaks. We highlight that of the many lessons, recommendations, and suggestions that emerged during previous outbreaks, few were introduced effectively into civil aviation practices and operations. Based on multiple data sources for passengers, cargo, and flight schedules, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on the global aviation industry and compare the data of some prominent airports to highlight the need for a coordinated response to effectively deal with future disruptions. As global aviation navigates its ongoing recovery, we discuss different responses during the pandemic including guidelines issued by bodies such as International Civil Aviation Organization, operational decisions such as closing terminals, increased cleaning frequencies, and mask mandates etc. We emphasize the need for resilience to accommodate disease outbreaks in future planning, design, and preparedness strategies for airports and airlines. We further argue that the existing civil aviation system needs a coordinated global response mechanism to combat future outbreaks and propose a framework with a threat response matrix to keep aviation safe and operational during future pandemics and mitigate socioeconomic fallout.

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“…When redesigning the underlying networks for sustainable aviation, one should not neglect the inherent challenges due to the network robustness. This pandemic can be considered a critical phase yielding the chance to increase the investment into research and engineering, identifying and implementing new forms of sustainable aviation [85,86]. A development into a direction that is beneficial for society should be geared and supported by governments, for instance by providing state incentives and goal-oriented funding and making collaborative recommendations and decisions at larger scales.…”

Section: Air Transportation Robustness and Aviation Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Robustness of Air Transportation as Complex Networks:Systematic Review of 15 Years of Research and Outlook into the Future

Sun

Wandelt

2021

Sustainability

Self Cite

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Air transportation systems are an important part of the critical infrastructure in our connected world. Accordingly, a better understanding and improvements in the resilience of the overall air transportation system are essential to the well-functioning of our society and overall sustainability of human beings. In the literature, network science is increasingly used to better understand the resilience dynamics of air transportation. Given the wide application of tools for network science and the importance of designing resilient air transportation systems, a rich body of studies has emerged in recent years. This review paper synthesizes the related literature that has been published throughout the last 15 years regarding the robustness of air transportation systems. The contributions of this work consist of two major elements. The first part provides a comprehensive discussion and cross-comparison of the reported results. We cover several major topics, including node importance identification, failure versus attack profiles, recovery and improvement techniques, and networks of networks approaches. The second part of this paper complements the review of aggregated findings by elaborating on a future agenda for robust air transportation research. Our survey-style overview hopefully contributes toward a better understanding of the state of the art in this research area, and, in turn, to the improvement of future air transportation resilience and sustainability.

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COVID-19 pandemic and air transportation: Successfully navigating the paper hurricane

Cited by 199 publications

References 133 publications

An Evaluation of the Operational Performance and Profitability of the U.S. Airlines

An Evaluation of the Operational Performance and Profitability of the U.S. Airlines

Airport pandemic response: An assessment of impacts and strategies after one year with COVID-19

Robustness of Air Transportation as Complex Networks:Systematic Review of 15 Years of Research and Outlook into the Future

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