The Airline Industry Affected by Coronavirus

 The Airline Industry affected by Rona:

By: Tanner Moroder 

The pandemic has affected a lot of people, places, and businesses throughout the last year, but one in particular are the airlines. As you may know ever since the pandemic hit, the amount of flights and global travel have gone down tremendously. Due to our circumstances in the world today, people feel less safe to hop on a flight and go on vacation. With that being said, the airline industry hasn't been doing as well but has been figuring out ways to still attract business.  

During March of 2020 was when the initial downward trend of commercial flights started happening. This is very understandable because people wanted to stay at home and quarantine to limit their chances of getting the virus. With more and more people quarantining and the government coming out with a stay at home order it is very difficult for the airlines to attract people to purchase flights. Another reason for the lack of commercial flights is due to the transition of in-person work to online work. With everything online and having the luxury of doing work in your basement there is no need to meet in person. According to CNBC.com, the global pandemic cut around 70,000 commercial flights from March 11 to the end of April. From this visual, it is easy to see that the demand for travel and flights has gone down significantly during the pandemic. At the time it was seen as too big of a risk. 

As well as commercial flights being cut, airline companies decided to substantially decrease prices to attract people to fly. This in hope would attract people to go more vacations for very cheap and the airlines could be making small gains. For example, according to expedia.com, a normal flight to Vegas from Milwaukee ranged anywhere from 120$ to 407$. During March of 2020 that same flight cost around 27$. With the demand for flights being so low it only makes sense for airlines to drop the prices to attract more customers to fly. Well this idea worked and the prices reached an all time low and then airlines were getting more and more people wanting to fly again. Ever since the prices dropped to an all time low the demand for lights went up because of how cheap they were. Now prices for flights have been on a steady incline, but are still below market equilibrium because of the pandemic. 

All in all, the airline industry has had a lot of problems throughout the pandemic, but have figured out ways to get through them quickly and efficiently using consumer demand in their favor. Although the industry couldn’t always go up and boom they took a short time of losses to gain the demand of flights back and in turn has elevated the business. So when is your next flight?

Works Cited

“$19 - Cheap Flights to Las Vegas NV in 2021: Expedia.” Expedia.com, www.expedia.com/Cheap-Flights-To-Las-Vegas.d178276.Travel-Guide-Flights.

Diego, Anton, and Name *. “Flight Prices 2020 - Airline Flight Prices.” EveryMundo, 16 June 2020, www.everymundo.com/2020-flight-price-trends/.

YenNee_Lee. “5 Charts Show Which Travel Sectors Were Worst Hit by the Coronavirus.” CNBC, CNBC, 6 May 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/coronavirus-pandemics-impact-on-travel-tourism-in-5-charts.html.