Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Airline Industry : Comparison of Actual and Expected Losses

Abstract

Since the day COVID-19 was declared a pandemic many companies in various industries all over the world have been affected by this fact. While some businesses have extracted profit from this situation, the airline industry, and, in particular, its passenger transportation sector, as a whole have suffered major losses due to the pandemic. As of 2022, while there have been some works published on the topic of COVID-19 and airlines, there is still not enough literature available to fully understand and evaluate the effect the pandemic had or still has on commercial airlines. Thus, this work will expand the available knowledge of this subject. Using the data from OpenSky, FlightRadar24 and Yahoo Finance we check the changes in air traffic in different parts of the world over the years, as well as how specific commercial airlines have been affected by the pandemic from the initial periods to the current moment when the majority of the counties have removed COVID-19 restrictions. As a result of our analysis, several facts have been established, such as that even in the 3rd quarter of 2022, the majority of the airlines still experience the lingering effects of the pandemic and cannot operate on the same scale, they have done before, while some small number of the commercial airlines have financially benefitted from the COVID-19 in regards of their stock prices and managed to hold this advantage till the current year.