Impact of Covid-19 on passengers and airlines from passenger measurements: Managing customer satisfaction while putting the US Air Transportation System to sleep

Philippe Monmousseau; Aude Marzuoli; Eric Feron; Daniel Delahaye

doi:10.1016/j.trip.2020.100179

Impact of Covid-19 on passengers and airlines from passenger measurements: Managing customer satisfaction while putting the US Air Transportation System to sleep

Transp Res Interdiscip Perspect. 2020 Sep:7:100179. doi: 10.1016/j.trip.2020.100179. Epub 2020 Sep 4.

Authors

Philippe Monmousseau¹, Aude Marzuoli¹, Eric Feron², Daniel Delahaye¹

Affiliations

¹ ENAC, Université de Toulouse, France.
² Division of Electrical, Computer and Mathematical Science and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the air transportation system worldwide. This paper aims at analyzing the effect of the travel restriction measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic from a passenger perspective on the US air transportation system. Four metrics based on data generated by passengers and airlines on social media are proposed to measure how the travel restriction measures impacted the relation between passengers and airlines in close to real-time. The proposed metrics indicate that each airline has reacted differently to the COVID-19 travel restriction measures from a passenger perspective, therefore they can be used by airlines and passengers to improve their decision making process. This report comes ahead of official data related to the same sequence of events, thereby showing the value of passenger-borne data in an industry where corporate priorities, institutional prudence, and passenger satisfaction come close together.

Keywords: Air transportation system; COVID-19; Passenger-centric metrics; Passenger-generated data.