Thomas 1

Ryan Thomas

Period 1

3/24/21

English 3

How has Covid affected air travel?

I get woken up at 5am still half asleep, I go over and grab my suitcase. I see my brother

come out of his room, him being half asleep as well. We go to the car and throw our suitcases in

the back of the car. We hop in the back seat and almost immediately my brother falls back asleep

while I pull out my DS and start playing Mario Kart. We get to the shuttle station where we park

the car and get on the shuttle bus that brings us to the airport. We hop out and walk to TSA to get

through security. After that we go to where our plane is. I immediately go over to the huge

windows that show all the planes leaving and being brought in. My dad comes over and explains

everything that's happening outside. He explains to me what the people on the ground are doing

directing the planes in and out. Since I was little my favorite part of the airport was my dad

explaining to me how planes worked. That’s where my interest in planes started.

My dad used to be in the navy where he worked on aircrafts. When he got out he worked

for South West doing the same thing. It's safe to say he knew what went on at the airport and

how the planes worked. We would always sit by the wing where the engines were. He explains to

me how the engine propels us forward and the wind goes under the wings which helps the plane

get off the ground. He would also explain what was happening on the ground, the people

directing the planes in and out after landing, or people boarding. He tells me after the plane gets
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what is called being towed which is when someone drives a car with an attachment on the front

that grabs the front of the plane and pulls it out of where we just boarded. After that the people

on the ground direct the pilot and tell them when it is safe to head to the runway. From there the

pilots go through a check of the plane to make sure everything works properly. After that they

talk to the tower and wait to get the all clear to take off. The flight attendants show what to do

incase of an emergency putting on the life vest and demonstrating how to blow it up. They take

off with a plane full of passengers not wearing masks or wiping down the seat with a disinfectant

wipe, not worried about getting sick.

For my senior project paper I want to explore how has Covid affected air travel? I want

to look into how has Covid affected the process of boarding, how many people don’t want to fly,

and how much money the airlines have lost. I talked to someone in the airline industry about how

it has affected them and also did some research to see what I could find out. I interviewed a pilot

instructor from Buchanan Airport named Jonathan Shand, I asked him how it affected him and

the piloting school. He said “We lost a lot of people because a lot of people come from other

countries to get their pilot licence.” Fortunately for them after flying became an essential worker

job they opened back up. “Even though we lost a lot of international students, people became

bored over quarantine and decided they wanted to get their pilot license.” He told me to look at

the new Covid stimulus bill that came out because there was a part in there about relief for

airports.

I looked up the Covid bill that he told me to search for. The bill that congress passed is

called the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. This bill is for relief for many things but I went to

section 7102 Relief for Airports, to find out that different types of airports got different amounts

of money to make up for the loss of sales and for sanitization. In the bill it states not more than
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$6,492,000,000 shall be made available for primary airports. The bill states that this money can

be used for certain cargo airports, for costs related to operations, personnel, cleaning,

sanitization, janitorial services, combating the spread of pathogens at the airport, and debt service

payments. They were given $8,000,000,000, until September 30, 2024 for assistance to sponsor

airports. This money will be available to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus.

On January 15, this year the ICAO stated, “seating fell by around 50 per cent that just left

1.8 billion passengers taking flights through 2020, compared with around 4.5 billion in 2019.”

The loss of passengers cost the industry around $370 billion. The ICAO which stands for the

International Civil Aviation Organization states in a press statement, “with airports and air

navigation services providers losing a further 115 billion and 13 billion, respectively”. When the

coronavirus began its global spread the air industry came to an almost standstill by the end of

March. As the world went into national lockdown and flights were very minimal the number of

passengers had gone down to “92 per cent from 2019 levels, and average of the 98 per cent

drop-off see in international traffic and 87 per cent fall in domestic air travel.” There was a

difference between domestic and international air travel. Since international air travel was way

more strict with who could travel, domestic travel turned out to hold out a little longer. Since

domestic air travel was still going on it helped the recovery of the industry mostly in China and

Russia. The ICAO noted this because in China and Russia domestic passenger numbers have

already returned to the pre- pandemic levels. Globally overall domestic air travel dropped 50 per

cent, while international travel dropped 74 per cent, which is around 1.4 billion passengers.

International air travel took a huge hit because more than 50 per cent of international travelers

were tourists. The ICAO says, “the regional breakdown in losses showed a $120 billion loss

year-on-year in the Asia-Pacific region, $100 billion in Europe, $88 billion in North America,
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followed by $26 billion, $22 billion and $14 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean, the

Middle East, and Africa, respectively.”

Another thing is how Covid has impacted aviation and how many people traveled. In a

article about the impact of COVID- 19 on aviation, according to Michael Gill who is the

executive director of the cross-industry air transport action group said, “With the expectation that

we will see less than half the passenger traffic this year than we carried in 2019, we know that a

lot of jobs in air transport and the wider economy relying on aviation are at risk.” He predicts

that 4.8 million jobs in aviation may be lost by the beginning of next year 2021. Tourism is also a

huge part of flying and since people can not go or don’t want to travel because of Covid airlines

have lost a significant amount of money. “Around 58% of tourist get to their destination by air

and over $630 billion in reduced GDP benefits from air travel-related tourism will be matched

with 26.4 million jobs lost.” Because traveling is more restricted and many people aren't going to

tour different places many many tourism jobs have been lost.

Airlines were also short of pilots until the pandemic hit and many pilots lost their jobs. In

a New York Times article a man left his job as a teacher to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot.

Before the pandemic hit people who were training to become pilots were told that they were

needed and would make a lot of money in their 50’s and 60’s. Unfortunately for many people

like the man in The New York Times their careers were put on hold and new pilots were

concerned about losing their job. While air travel has recovered somewhat it is still a fourth of

what it was last year. Many experts say that the recovery will be slow because of the

unpredictableness of the pandemic. Some public health experts fear that if the number of cases

continue to increase that air travel will become a lot less appealing.
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Another person that I interviewed was Elizabeth who is a flight attendant for United

Airlines. She says “They went from 25,000 to about 4,000 flight attendants working”. That is

about a 70% cut in workers. The airline industry lost so much revenue that they had to lay off a

lot of people. She also told me that at one point they were losing $50,000 a day. United Airlines

gave out incentives to furlough and early retirement. I asked Elizabeth if a lot of flight attendants

quit because there weren’t many flights and they weren’t going to just fire 70% of their flight

attendant staff. She goes on to tell me that a lot of people did quit because United gave out a

package deal. Saying if you quit now they would give you a bunch of benefits. United knew that

they needed to get rid of people but they couldn’t just fire them, so they said if you quit now or

go into early retirement and they would give you these benefits. They did this to make people

want to leave because United knew they were over staffed and they knew a lot of the older staff

would want to leave.

In the early stages of the virus before the mask mandate they started to get U.S. citizens

back to their countries. After that there weren't a lot of people flying so they started putting cargo

on domestic planes to help get cargo around. They would even just have flights just for cargo

because it made it easier and some stuff can not be put on a boat.

Something else she talked about was about people wearing masks. She says “We are not

enforcers, we are enformers.” Flight attendants are supposed to give a warning notice, if they

don’t comply they tell the captain. Who gets in contact with the ground agents, who then have to

tell the authorities. You have to wear a mask because it is a federal mandate. If you do not

comply this can result in being removed from the plane, not being able to board, banned from

flights or getting fined. “Generally we tell them we are only supposed to tell them once or twice

then we hand them a little piece of paper that explains in detail what can happen”. Elizabeth goes
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on to explain that it is a mandate from the airline to wear a mask but the authorities have taken it

a step further. Which is why they do not have to deal with the non compliant customers.

Right now Elizabeth is traveling between the Hawaiian Islands which she says are very

strict. Each island has its own rules because they do not want to mess with the virus since the

islands are very small so it would spread very easily. They also don’t have a lot of ICU beds and

medical care. Kauai has been the most strict; you have to do a covid test before you leave. Kona

does random tests upon arrival, Maui is starting to do this too but it is not random they are

making everyone do one. Some of the other countries are very strict too but there are a couple

that aren’t too strict. In Germany she said it was pretty open. She could go out and shop and she

didn’t have to quarantine. In Australia she couldn’t leave her room because they didn’t want the

flight attendants to mix in with the public.

Now the service is different too; they want as little contact as possible. If you want a

drink they hand you cans instead of pouring your drink for you. Also they stopped giving

alcoholic beverages in coach because they don't wanna have to deal with touching peoples credit

cards. When they give you anything they have to wear a mask and gloves. Since United does

mostly international travel, when she has layovers they give them a hotel to stay at so they

sanitize the hotel room because hotels are nasty and you really don’t know how well they

cleaned the room. Her layovers sometimes were two to three days because there weren't that

many people so the next flight back would be until then. When they got to the destination they

would have to be there quarantined until the next flight came to take them back. Another thing

that I found super interesting that she told me was about when they are about to take off they go

over what to do incase of an emergency. Usually they put the life vest on another attendant and
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show where you would pull to have it inflate. Now they have to just hold it up and can only tell

you where they are and where to pull it.

It is so interesting that Covid has changed the airline industry so much. They lost so

much revenue a ton of workers. I was surprised to see that the flight attendants had the most

change out of everyone. They do deal with the public the most so it does make sense that they

have had the biggest changes. The airline industry has lost so much money but is now starting to

see profit. At the beginning of Covid a lot of people lost their jobs because nobody could fly

anywhere. Now that the vaccine is starting to come out a lot more people are starting to fly again

and hopefully soon they can lift some of these restrictions off. Then people can get back to going

on planes and there will be more flights which means people can get back to their jobs. For my

project I have decided to start the process of getting my pilot license. With the many people I

talked to in the airline industry I was told this is the perfect time to get it.
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Work Cited

Oecd. COVID-19 and the Aviation Industry: Impact and Policy Responses, 15 Oct. 2020,

www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/covid-19-and-the-aviation-industry-impact-an

d-policy-responses-26d521c1/.

“The Impact of COVID-19 on Aviation.” Airlines.,

www.airlines.iata.org/news/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-aviation.

Yarmuth, John A. “Text - H.R.1319 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): American Rescue Plan

Act of 2021.” Congress.gov, 11 Mar. 2021,

www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1319/text#toc-H4BAEC73870DF404EA

47BA7BE6987C56D.

Chokshi, Niraj. “Pilots Were Once in Short Supply. Now They're Losing Their Jobs.” The

New York Times, The New York Times, 6 July 2020,

www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/business/pilots-jobs-shortage-airlines.html.

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/what-to-expect.html

“Economic Impacts of COVID-19 on Civil Aviation // .” Economic Impacts of COVID-19

on Civil Aviation,

www.icao.int/sustainability/Pages/Economic-Impacts-of-COVID-19.aspx.

“Air Travel down 60 per Cent, as Airline Industry Losses Top $370 Billion: ICAO | | UN

News.” United Nations, United Nations, news.un.org/en/story/2021/01/1082302.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/01/1082302