Analysis of the Impacts of COVID-19 on US Airline Schedule Planning and Service Delivery, 2018 to 2022

Aisling Reynolds-Feighan

A chapter in Airlines and the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2024, vol. 11, pp 283-317 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This chapter examines business resilience and capacity management by US airlines during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It analyzes matched data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics and daily flight schedules from the Official Airline Guide to compare disruption impacts across different airport categories and airlines. Simple, scalable measures of resilience are introduced, utilizing average and standard deviation measures relative to prepandemic periods. Airlines adjusted their capacity offerings swiftly in response to the pandemic-induced demand collapse, with substantial disruption initially but followed by stabilization. Throughout 2020 and 2021, there were more schedule variations compared to the postpandemic periods of 2022 and 2023. Low-cost carriers (LCCs) rebounded faster than full-service carriers (FSCs), with smaller LCCs showing the quickest recovery, expanding operations notably at smaller airports. Consequently, smaller airports regained prepandemic traffic levels faster than major ones focused on big FSC networks. Analysis reveals that while the largest airports often have more flights scheduled than performed, medium and smaller airports tend to have more flights performed than scheduled, albeit with higher variability for medium ones. The study argues that the airline scheduling process proved resilient and adaptable to the significant and prolonged disruption caused by the pandemic.

Keywords: Business resilience; airlines; COVID-19; capacity management; airline schedules; airport traffic variability; pandemic; low-cost carriers recovery; airline scheduling adaptability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 2-160920240000011011
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:aiaezz:s2212-160920240000011011

DOI: 10.1108/S2212-160920240000011011

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Airline Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().