A data-driven analysis of the aviation recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic

Xiaoqian Sun; Sebastian Wandelt; Anming Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jairtraman.2023.102401

A data-driven analysis of the aviation recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic

J Air Transp Manag. 2023 Jun:109:102401. doi: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2023.102401. Epub 2023 Apr 5.

Authors

Xiaoqian Sun¹, Sebastian Wandelt¹, Anming Zhang²

Affiliations

¹ Beihang University, National Key Laboratory of CNS/ATM, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, 100191 Beijing, China.
² Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Abstract

In Summer 2022, after a lean COVID-19 spell of almost three years, many airlines reported profits and some airlines even outperformed their pre-pandemic records. In context of the perceived recovery, it is interesting to understand how different markets have gone through the pandemic challenges. In this study, we perform a spatial and temporal dissection of the recovery process the global aviation system went through since May 2020. At the heart of this study, we investigate the patterns underlying market entry decisions during the recovery phase. We identify a rather heterogeneous type of recovery as well as its underlying drivers. We believe that our work is a timely contribution to the research on COVID-19 and aviation, complementary to the existing studies in the literature.

Keywords: Aviation; COVID-19; Markets; Recovery.