Airlines Boeing 777-200ERs parked on
Schiphol runway during the crisis On 5 March 2020, the
International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that the airline industry could lose between US$63 to 113 billion of revenues due to the reduced number of passengers. IATA had previously estimated revenue losses of around US$30 billion two weeks before their 5 March estimate. By 17 March, IATA had stated that its 5 March estimate was "outdated", and that airlines would require $200 billion in bailouts to survive the crisis. IATA further revised their revenue loss estimate on 24 March to be $252 billion globally, a 44 percent drop. Another further estimate was published on 14 April, which forecasted a revenue drop of $314 billion (55 percent) and a traffic drop of 48 percent in passenger count for 2020. Due to the sudden and large losses of revenue, airlines began to hold out against refunding cancelled flights and tickets to conserve cash, despite government regulations. In Europe, airlines had successfully negotiated to defer some $1.2 billion in
air traffic control charges.
Oliver Wyman reported that Asian airlines reduced their
available seat miles by 23 percent in March 2020. In Europe, the impact of the outbreak is expected to accelerate
corporate consolidation in the airline industry. According to consultancy CAPA Centre for Aviation, most airlines would be bankrupted by the end of May 2020. Air travel demand rose 2.4 percent year-on-year in January 2020, the lowest it has been since the
April 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull, though travel disruptions due to coronavirus only began in late January. By March, the number of flights had plummeted, with about 280,000 flights reported between 24 and 30 March 2020 compared to around 780,000 in a similar period the previous year. Despite a lack of passengers, regulations regarding
flight slots initially compelled British airlines to fly empty planes to European airports to avoid losing their slots. Fuel prices dropping (due to an
oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia) by around a quarter could not compensate for the fall in demand. Analysts expect airlines to reduce the size of their fleets as a result of the downturn, and point out that this could be done either by modernizing fleets—hastening the retirement of older aircraft and maintaining planned deliveries of new, more fuel-efficient models—or by retaining older planes and reducing capital expenditure on new aircraft. By mid-April 2020, the inactive fleet ballooned to almost 14,400, over two thirds of the 22,000 mainline passenger airliners, leaving 7,635 in operation stood: predominantly in Europe, where less than 15% are operating, than in North America (45%) or Asia (49%); and affecting
narrow-body aircraft (37%) less than
wide-body aircraft (27%). Consequently, demand for aircraft storage increased to the point where runways and taxiways in normally busy airports such as
Frankfurt Airport and
Atlanta Airport were closed to make room for storage. In April 2020, global passenger capacity is down 91%; the
ICAO anticipates 1.2 billion fewer travelers by September 2020 compared to a typical year, a revenue fall of $160–253 billion for the first nine months of 2020. While European airlines owe $10 billion for cancelled flights, IATA is predicting a 55% fall in revenue compared to 2019, a $89 billion hit, costing $452 billion on the wider economy. Boeing anticipates passenger traffic recovering in two to three years to 2019 levels, but expects production to take longer. The
Airports Council International estimates 4.6 billion fewer passengers in 2020, down from 9.1 billion in 2019. The IATA expects
RPKs to be down by half from 2019 except in North America, down by 36%; for $314 billion lower revenues, a 55% fall. The association forecast air travel to lag economic recovery by up to two years: air traffic in 2021 would still be down by 24% from 2019, and a return to 2019 levels would happen by 2023–2025. By June 2020, the IATA was projecting a collective net loss of $84.3 billion yearly for Airlines, worse than the $30 billion loss during the
Great Recession, and projects that income will remain negative through 2021. By mid-April 2020, 14,500 mainline airliners were stored, leaving 7,400 active: one third of the whole fleet, even one fifth for European carriers; down from 20,200 in active service and 1,800 in storage before. By mid-June, 10,500 were still stored while 11,500 were active, with an average daily utilisation down by 35% from 2019; led by Asia-Pacific airlines with almost 75% of the fleet flying, then Europe with one third still stored, then North America with a 50/50 split. Major airliner deliveries dropped from a typical 90 to 100 aircraft a month to an average of less than 40 in the first half of 2020. As traffic may not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, older, less fuel-efficient, and higher-maintenance aircraft retirement is accelerating, including the
Boeing 777,
Airbus A330 and
Airbus A380. They are replaced with newer
Airbus A350 and
Boeing 787s, as a surplus of used aircraft is expected until 2030. By the third quarter of 2020,
China Southern became the first of the large Chinese carriers to return to profitability, while
Air China and
China Eastern managed to narrow their losses, helped by domestic travel recovery by September after traffic bottomed out in February—but international demand is still in the doldrums. By May 2021, 7,850 airliners were still in storage, down from a peak of 16,522 in April 2020. As US traffic recovers, networks are evolving towards more
point-to-point transit to
leisure destinations, bypassing major
airline hubs while
business travel is still lagging. The aggregation of the 66 largest airlines with public financials showed a revenue falling by 60% from $658Bn in 2019 to $262Bn in 2020, while net profits went from $17bn to a $140bn loss, a $157bn decrease. By the end of 2021, the global airline industry had returned to 79% of its pre-Covid size according to
Airline Business, using an index from 13 of the largest airline groups: 86% of the workforce size, 96% of the fleet size, 71% of the revenue and 62% of the passenger numbers. In the final quarter of 2022, the same index was at 105% of the 2019 activity: 84% of passenger numbers with higher fares due to strong demand and constrained capacity, 97% of the fleet size, 92% of the employee number. Sun et al. 's study notes that during the pandemic the International Air Transport Association (IATA) recommends a distance of 1–2 m between passengers at all times. Therefore, in order to maintain appropriate social distancing, airlines in various countries have responded by adjusting the order and method of boarding. For example, Delta Air Lines' boarding and seating rules are for middle seats to be empty and rows to be moved from back to front and United Airlines' rules are from back to front, Business class last. Although airlines have adopted a rear-to-front boarding process, studies have shown that this method of boarding is slow and it does not necessarily reduce social proximity.
Aerospace manufacturers As demand plummeted, values fell 2% to 22% between January and May 2020 for five-year old aircraft, and
lease rates by 4% to 26%. By August, values fell further by 9% to 25% since January, and lease rates by 12% to 45%. By November, market values of 20-year-old large
single-aisles had fallen by 22% to 29% while their lease rates had fallen by 44% to 50%, and market values of 20-year-old
widebody twins had fallen by 15 to 35% while their lease rates had fallen by 20 to 44%. As the pandemic reduced demand for new jets in early 2020, manufacturers trimmed airliner production rates and were producing aircraft they are unable to deliver. Airbus cut its monthly production from 60 to 40
A320s, from 4.5 to two
A330s, and from nine to six
A350s. Boeing reduced its output per month from 14 to six
787s, from five to two
777s, and
737 Max production was already halted, as a rate of 31 per month was targeted by early 2022.
Bloomberg was expecting Airbus and Boeing to deliver 30 jets monthly each in 2021, mostly for single-aisles. In 2020, deliveries were down by more than 50% compared to 2019, after 10 years of growth. •
Airbus reduced its wing production on factories in
Broughton,
Filton and
Bremen, and reduced working hours in the sites. Its French and Spanish sites suspended production for several days before a partial resumption on 23 March. Monthly production was cut to four A220s, forty A320s, two A330s and six A350s. Airbus delivered 122 aircraft in the first quarter, 40 fewer than in the previous year, and 60 could not be handed over due to travel restrictions. Airliner
revenues were down 22% to €7.5 billion,
earnings dropped by 82% to €57 million, and their adjusted
EBIT was down 59% to €191 million. The company
free cash flow was a negative €8 billion, including the €3.6 billion bribery penalties, similar to the negative €4.3 billion of the previous year without. For the first quarter, Airbus' total adjusted EBIT was halved to €281 million, and it made a net loss of €481 million (compared to a €40 million profit in the previous year). In 2020,
capital expenditure should be reduced by €700 million to €1.9 billion. •
Boeing froze hiring and reportedly laid off employees due to a large number of cancellations, which outpaced new orders in February 2020. On 11 March, it was revealed that Boeing was to exercise its whole US$13.8 billion loan facility (which it secured in February). Prior to the pandemic, Boeing's business had been impacted by
groundings of its 737 MAX aircraft. By 7 April, Boeing had indefinitely suspended production at
Boeing South Carolina and
Puget Sound,
Washington, completely halting the assembly of its commercial aircraft. On 21 April, Boeing announced a management structure overhaul. On 27 May, it announced plans to lay off 12,000 employees, while it reported zero new orders in April 2020. In October, it announced plans to lay off thousands more employees through the following year, with the expectation that it would end 2021 with 19% fewer employees than its pre-pandemic workforce. •
Bombardier on 26 March 2020 announced a suspension of most Canadian production in
Ontario (for 2 weeks) and
Quebec (until 13 April), in addition to halting production in
Northern Ireland. 12,400 Bombardier employees in Canada (70 percent of the workforce) were furloughed. •
CFM International deliveries of
CFM LEAP engines across the first nine months of 2020 fell to 622 from 1,316 in the same period in 2019, and 123
CFM56s against 327, while Leap fleet cycles were down 15% year-on-year and CFM56 cycles were 48% lower. •
Embraer reported deferment of orders of its commercial aircraft. It also suspended its financial guidance for 2020. •
General Electric announced on 23 March 2020 that it would cut one tenth of employees in its
jet engine arm, amounting to around 2,500 employees, in addition to furloughing around half of its maintenance and repair staff. •
Mitsubishi in May 2020 halved the budget of its
SpaceJet programme and repatriated all work from the US to Japan. In October 2020 it announced a further budget reduction and put almost all SpaceJet activities on hold. •
Rolls-Royce planned to cut 9,000 jobs, mainly in its civil aerospace division, and mainly affecting its UK site at
Derby. •
Textron Inc., the parent company of
Textron Aviation and
Bell Helicopter, announced a 1,950 jobs layoff. •
United Aircraft Corporation, Russian Industry and Trade Minister said "is quite balanced as a production unit". Because recovery is quicker in Russia than abroad, the production program is drafted for 2020–2021. Also, the market will require up to 1,500 new civil jets within the next 15 to 20 years, adding that there is scope for optimism in the domestic industry. On 25 April 2020, Boeing announced it had terminated the planned
Boeing–Embraer joint venture after the 24 April delay expired, attributing it to Embraer's failure to meet conditions. Later the same day, Embraer asserted that it had satisfied the conditions for consolidation to proceed, and that it would seek compensation for Boeing's allegedly wrongful termination of the deal. Aviation analyst Scott Hamilton believed the collapse in demand for airliners caused by the pandemic and the resulting cash constraints motivated Boeing's defection, along with the desire to avoid the perception that it was using government pandemic relief funds for foreign investment.
Airports , California;
Teruel, Spain;
Lourdes, France;
Alice Springs, Australia in June 2022 • From March 2020, various United States airlines stored hundreds of disused aircraft at
Southern California Logistics Airport and
Roswell International Air Center. • Runways and taxiways at
Frankfurt Airport, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and
Tulsa International Airport were closed and used as aircraft storage areas by
Lufthansa, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines respectively. •
Ciudad Real International Airport and
Madrid Airport benefited from medical equipment cargo corridors from China. • By mid-April 2020,
Airports Council International (ACI) observed a 95% fall in traffic in 18 airports in major aviation markets in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. • On 27 April 2020,
Westchester County Airport closed to airlines for about a month for a major runway repaving project, which was originally scheduled to be undertaken in stages late at night over the span of four months. The decision to close and expedite the project was made because the number of daily flights had fallen drastically. This was the first total closure of a United States commercial airport for pandemic-related reasons. • Various airlines from outside Australia stored aircraft at
Alice Springs Airport. • On 5 May 2020, ACI World estimated that in 2020, passenger traffic worldwide would amount to less than half of what was previously projected for the year. • UK airports axed expansion plans valued at £1 billion. • In May 2020,
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) was the world's busiest airport
measured by aircraft movements despite significantly lower traffic than normal.
American Airlines diminished
point-to-point routes and instead sent flights through its DFW
hub, creating traffic volumes surpassing those at the normally busier
O'Hare International Airport and
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport by substantial margins. • In May 2020,
Salt Lake City International Airport reported that an in-progress redevelopment project would be sped up by as much as two years by the pandemic. Lower passenger numbers meant that larger areas of the airport could be closed much earlier than expected for demolition and renovation, saving up to $300 million for the project overall. •
Orly Airport in Paris was closed to commercial traffic from 1 April to 25 June 2020. • In Europe, some of the airports that saw the most parked airliners during the pandemic were
Ciudad Real International Airport,
Madrid Airport,
Teruel Airport and
Istanbul Airport. • In late October 2020,
ACI Europe stated that 193 (mostly regional) of the 740 airports in Europe were risking bankruptcy. • Coronavirus related travel restrictions imposed in 2020 reduced traffic by 70% at the Dubai International Airport. The number of travellers through this tourism hub dropped to 25.9 million in 2020. • As compared to Q1 of 2020, Dubai International Airport's passenger traffic has plunged 67.8% to reach 5.75 million in Q1 of 2021. Along with the main airports in Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, Chicago and Paris, Dubai has also dropped out of the top 10 rankings for total passengers last year. • On 17 July 2021, ACI World estimated that global passenger traffic in 2020 was reduced by over 5.9 billion passengers, a loss of 62.3% of what was estimated for the year. • In Summer 2022, many airports experienced extraordinary long delays and a large number of cancelled flights, as a consequence of the pandemic. In particular, at
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the pandemic led to recession of air traffic and subsequently to the shortage of security staff and walkout of baggage handlers, which resulted in hours long queues.
Regulators • In March 2020, the United States
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it would not take enforcement action against pilots whose medical certificates expired between 31 March and 30 June, due to the difficulty of scheduling appointments with certified Aviation Medical Examiners. In June, the FAA expected that the exception would be extended. • The FAA announced on 23 April 2020 a reduction in the operating hours of over 100
control towers and terminal radar approach control facilities, citing a drop in air traffic of as much as 96%. Pilots were advised that certain air traffic control services and
instrument landing system approaches may be periodically unavailable.
Government • On 8 June 2020, the Austrian
conservative–
green coalition government concluded a support deal for
Austrian Airlines (a subsidiary of Lufthansa) for €150 million in taxpayer grants, and €300 million in banking loans that are to be paid back. This was significantly less than expected (Austrian Airlines had applied for €767 million), and came under the stringent conditions (some of which also applied to other airline companies operating in Austria) to restrict short-distance airline operations, to ban cheap tickets below €40 and include a €12 environmental tax to each ticket, and to half its CO2 emissions by 2030.
Other organizations • Many United States
general aviation social events and
fly-ins scheduled for the spring of 2020 were cancelled or postponed, including
Sun 'n Fun and several conducted by the
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. • On 1 May 2020, citing uncertainty about COVID-19 social restrictions imposed by the state of
Wisconsin, the
Experimental Aircraft Association canceled
EAA AirVenture Oshkosh for 2020. •
Air charter company
JetSuite ceased flight operations on 15 April 2020 and its parent company filed for bankruptcy on 28 April 2020; CEO
Alex Wilcox attributed the company's collapse to a 90% drop in business due to widespread stay-at-home orders. • Travel technology company
Sabre Corporation furloughed one third of its workforce on 23 April 2020, citing an 81% drop in revenue due to drastically reduced airline and other travel bookings. Sabre had previously cut salaries by 20%, suspended
401(k) pension contributions, cut various other expenses, and obtained a US$1.1 billion loan, but these steps reportedly failed to offset losses. == By country ==