Aviation Industry Affected by Covid-19 Pandemic

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Table of Contents

Background to the Onset of COVID-19
Effects of COVID-19 on Aviation Industry
Human Factor Issues from the Newly Rising COVID-19 Cases
Reference List

Background to the Onset of COVID-19

The aviation sector altered dramatically in March 2020 for a number of reasons. The worldwide COVID-19 epidemic affected the air transport performance and efficiency as it forced everybody to frantically strive to keep safe and isolated. The performance of the majority of aviation industries also showed a significant decline. The aviation industry’s patterns altered rapidly, leaving companies shuttered, suffering tremendous losses, and even bankruptcy.

With the advent of COVID-19, airlines began experiencing unprecedented effects such as a decreased number of customers. Airline companies were forced to introduce incentives and bonuses to attract customers. As the weeks progressed, the truth of the epidemic became apparent, and traveling was prohibited in an attempt to halt the further spread of COVID-19 (Miani et al., 2021). Unfortunately, travel was halted too late to limit the virus. This essay explores the communication, safety, and security factors from COVID-19.

Effects of COVID-19 on Aviation Industry

In nine months, the airline sector’s trends shifted from excellent to deplorable and then back to optimistic. COVID-19 has harmed people’s lives and has caused companies to fail. Families are trying to earn a living, and millions of people are still unemployed. The airline sector faces billions of dollars in losses, federal loans, and a lack of customer trust (Liu, Kim and O’Connell, 2021). While domestic limitations are being lifted, COVID-19 continues to rise in the United States, without any evidence of the curve flattening within the nearest future (Kumar and Kumar, 2021). Despite Europe and Asia experiencing another spike, it does not seem that international travel will become more common within the observable future. COVID-19 has also wreaked havoc on companies, causing massive job losses and company closures.

Most nations have enforced travel bans and airport border restrictions, which impact airport and airline revenue. If it is reduced or no passengers travel in flights, the income for airlines and their operators subsides. Some airlines have suffered significant losses due to a lack of income, and some may go bankrupt as a result (Belhadi et al., 2021; Albers and Rundshagen, 2020). Aside from that, the travel prohibition has caused significant disruption to be local and international aviation industry—furthermore, the closure of airport businesses and routes due to COVID-19 influences the airline sector supply chain. Alternatively, the cost of the airline industry’s market share has dropped (Dube, Nhamo and Chikodzi, 2021; Tisdall, Zhang and Zhang, 2021). Airports’ operating revenue is declining due to low passenger volume; market share is also declining, and travel restrictions on domestic and international routes are in place.

Human Factor Issues from the Newly Rising COVID-19 Cases

Safety concerns have exponentially increased among the aviation sector workers from work pressure amidst preventing from contracting COVID-19. The emotional and mental effect of such safety concerns influences the psychological health of workers addressing both safety concerns. As air traffic grows, Air traffic control officers (ATCO) and flight operational employees, among them dispatchers and crew, may face ongoing pressure to maintain on-time productivity in a new and constantly changing operating environment.

Due to the increased safety and health procedures involved with COVID-19 activities, turnaround times are projected to rise. However, there might be a variety of variables and unknowns influencing operating performance, ranging from more ground delay at a stop to reduced airport capacity owing to parked aircraft.

The changes in the aviation industry due to the coronavirus have also affected the area of maintenance and ATC. Specifically, due to the increase in workload pressure and the rise in mental health concerns caused by the pandemic, the attention to detail in maintenance and ATC has dropped drastically (Bauer, Bloch and Merkert, 2020).

Air Traffic Control

It is also worth outlining that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected people’s mental health severely. In the aviation industry, the observed trend has been a major cause of a drop in safety levels for patients and crew. Specifically, reports indicate that crew members are prone to making errors when being affected by mental health issues such as anxiety and related disorders (Drogoul and Cabon, 2021). Additionally, ATC members have become particularly prone to errors and mismanagement of information due to the increase in workload, amount of processed information, and the levels of tension. As a result, accidents become more probable, and the safety rates drop.

Aviation Personnel and Crew

The issue of social skills has also been affected by the pandemic, causing people to lose a substantial range of competencies associated with communication due to the prolonged social distancing (Drogoul and Cabon, 2021). As a result, the efficacy of communication between passengers and the crew may have dropped, which is likely to lead to a failure in communicating essential safety standards to passengers (Bauer et al., 2020). Consequently, a drop in the levels of passenger security ensues.

Soft and Technical Skills

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a significant drop in quality in the airlines industry due to the change in the approaches toward task management. Specifically, the process of teamwork and leadership appears to have been transformed to reflect the need to manage key tasks in a stress-prone environment. As a result, the current range of soft skills has expanded to include the ability to work under significant pressure.

Competency

Finally, the competency issue must be rendered as a crucial point in the problem of quality assurance and, particularly, safety management in aviation. However, the issue of competence development and improvement appears to be less some-sided than the remaining concepts (Bauer et al., 2020). Specifically, while the presence of the pandemic has restricted the opportunities for interpersonal communication and, therefore, the focus on active skill sharing, it has also offered extensive options of remote training and, therefore active cross-cultural experience sharing.

The flight crew’s existing security procedures and competence is a major human factor that COVID-19 has disrupted. Flight crew qualifications have been expanded during the COVID-19 epidemic due to hindrance in options to preserve the validity of their expertise and travel to attend training programs (Tanrıverdi, Bakır and Merkert, 2020). This has resulted in the delay of recertification and the necessity for flight crew waivers. The increase in adherence to social distance regulations has created barriers that have restricted the number of learners in classroom and simulator training sessions, contributing to the backlog.

Further extensions of license validity (including medical credentials and technical permits) require approval from destination officials. There have emerged particular security concerns regarding airport procedures and landings, typically the most dangerous flight parts. Maintenance workers, Air Traffic Controllers, and other professionals face similar security and competency challenges. The specified change has affected the industry significantly, complicating the relationships between the key participants and creating additional impediments for the performance of airline staff members. As a result, the employees have been delivering the services of exceedingly negative quality, which has resulted not only in the drop in revenues, but also in the increase in the exposure to the human factor in quality control and, therefore, in passenger safety.

Communication is an essential aspect of commercial and private airline personnel. When the airline staff wears facial masks on the flight, this may impede verbal communication among flight staff members or Flight Control professionals (Olaganathan and Amihan, 2021). Wearing a mask preceding takeoff can disrupt communications among pilots and ground personnel (Serrano and Kazda, 2020). Local rules may restrict pre-flight movements by the aircraft flight crew, leading to fatigue by the crew. Miscommunications during pre-flight inspections and flights have the potential to result in aircraft accidents, creating further safety concerns.

The worldwide epidemic negatively transformed the airline industry and forced new and economically challenging safety measures on all participants, including businesses and customers. Furthermore, the effects of the COVID-19 have turned out to be not only health-related, but also economic. Families are trying to earn a living, and millions of people are still unemployed. The airline sector faces billions of dollars in losses, federal loans, and a lack of customer trust. Additionally, the pandemic has presented security, communication, technical, and safety human factors to the entire aviation industry.

Reference List

Albers, S. and Rundshagen, V., 2020 ‘European airlines′ strategic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic’, Journal of Air Transport Management, 87, p.101863.

Bauer, L.B., Bloch, D. and Merkert, R., 2020 ‘Ultra Long-Haul: An emerging business model accelerated by COVID-19’, Journal of Air Transport Management, 89, p.101901.

Belhadi, A., Kamble, S., Jabbour, C.J.C., Gunasekaran, A., Ndubisi, N.O. and Venkatesh M. (2021) ‘Manufacturing and service supply chain resilience to the COVID-19 outbreak: Lessons learned from the automobile and airline industries’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 163, p.120447.

Drogoul, F. and Cabon, P., (2021) ‘Post COVID-19 Fatigue Management for ATCOs’, In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp. 319-323). Springer, Cham.

Dube, K., Nhamo, G. and Chikodzi, D., 2021 ‘COVID-19 pandemic and prospects for recovery of the global aviation industry’, Journal of Air Transport Management, 92, p.102022.

Kumar, A. and Kumar, S., 2021 ‘Pandemic outbreak and aviation business survival: COVID-19 impacts, challenges and passengers’ future expectations in new normalization of Indian domestic aviation’, ZENITH International Journal of Business Economics & Management Research, 11(1), pp.16-32.

Liu, A., Kim, Y.R. and O’Connell, J.F., 2021’ COVID-19 and the aviation industry: The interrelationship between the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the frequency of flights on the EU market’, Annals of Tourism Research, 91, p.103298.

Olaganathan, R. and Amihan, R.A.H., (2021) ‘Impact of COVID-19 on Pilot Proficiency–A Risk Analysis’, Global Journal of Engineering and Technology Advances, 6(03), p.1.

Serrano, F. and Kazda, A., 2020 ‘The future of airport post COVID-19’, Journal of Air Transport Management, 89, p.101900.

Tanrıverdi, G., Bakır, M. and Merkert, R., 2020 ‘What can we learn from the JATM literature for the future of aviation post COVID-19? -A bibliometric and visualization analysis’, Journal of Air Transport Management, 89, p.101916.

Tisdall, L., Zhang, Y. and Zhang, A. (2021) ‘COVID-19 impacts on general aviation – Comparative experiences, governmental responses and policy imperatives’, Transport Policy, 110, pp. 273–280.

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