Analysis Interpretation of the news based on evidence, including data, as well as anticipating how events might unfold based on past events.
How coronavirus grounded the airline industry
Tens of thousands of flights have been canceled since the outbreak spread beyond China in January. The few planes in the skies now are devoid of passengers, and pilots and crew members are out of work.
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In December, Wuhan, one of China’s largest industrial hubs, reported its first cases of covid-19. As the outbreak started to spread, countries across East Asia, including Japan, Malaysia and Thailand, restricted flights to China and South Korea to prevent further transmission.
In March, air traffic waned throughout the Middle East. Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia closed their major airports. Turkey banned all international air travel.
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Flights over Europe nearly evaporated as covid-19 swept through northern Italy, forcing EasyJet, Ryanair and Lufthansa to cut flights by at least 80 percent.
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On March 13, President Trump announced sweeping restrictions on travel from more than two dozen European countries.
On March 20, a more minor disruption occurred: Airspace east of Indianapolis was closed after an air traffic controller’s positive coronavirus test shut down the workspace for disinfecting and quarantine.
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On March 13, President Trump announced sweeping restrictions on travel from more than two dozen European countries.
On March 20, a more minor disruption occurred: Airspace east of Indianapolis was closed after an air traffic controller’s positive coronavirus test shut down the workspace for disinfecting and quarantine.
Air traffic data via FlightRadar24
The aviation industry’s unprecedented free fall from the coronavirus pandemic already has forced some airlines into bankruptcy, and others are on the brink.
Business and leisure travel both have cratered, and pilots are flying nearly empty jets around the United States and Europe. According to Aireon, a satellite-based aviation tracking company, 37,826 aircraft were tracked on Nov. 5, before the coronavirus took its toll on international air travel. On Tuesday, however, just 26,217 planes were detected, a decrease of 30.7 percent.
“These two Tuesdays, which would otherwise show comparable flight totals, demonstrate the acute impact of the covid-19 crisis on the aviation industry,” said Cyriel Kronenburg, vice president of aviation services at Aireon.
[Inside Delta’s command center the week the coronavirus devastated the airline industry]
Flight crews now often have eerily quiet airports to themselves. One longtime flight attendant for Alaska Airlines said the industry crisis is worse than the downturn after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when her husband, a pilot for Alaska Air, was flying.
They worry about losing their jobs, said the attendant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the business. And they “are both terrified of us getting sick on the road” and bringing the coronavirus home to their children, she said. “There’s a fear every time I go to work.”
“It wasn’t a crisis until it was, and when it was, man, it was full on”
Furloughs and layoffs and anxiety ripple throughout an industry that employs 750,000 in the United States alone.
Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the rapid descent of industry fortunes has been stunning.
“I think the shock to everyone is the speed of change from when it had been talked about in the world, to within a matter of days,” when everything was canceled, he said. “It wasn’t a crisis until it was, and when it was, man, it was full on.”
Just a few weeks ago, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade group of nearly 300 airlines worldwide, offered a grim projection: Revenue would decline by $113 billion in 2020. Then the United States imposed travel restrictions on 28 European nations, and IATA revised its projection.
“Our previous worst-case scenario” from mid-March, said Alexandre de Juniac, director general and chief executive of IATA, now looks far greater than the latest estimates, which forecast revenue plummeting by $252 billion.
Recovery may not come until 2021, the association’s chief economist said Tuesday during a conference call.
Many airlines are operating flights that are only 20 or 30 percent full, despite significant cuts in service, and IATA estimates that 1.1 million flights will be canceled through June 30.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, U.S. carriers were transporting record numbers of passengers — about 2.5 million daily. The numbers had climbed for 28 months, and in January, 61.2 million passengers flew domestically, and 9.1 million internationally.
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Source: Transportation Security Administration
Then the bottom fell out.
On Tuesday, the TSA screened just over 146,000 passengers at U.S. airports, a 94 percent plunge from 2.4 million on the same day last year. By the end of March, the TSA screened just over 35 million passengers at U.S. airports during the month, a 50 percent decrease from more than 70 million at the end of March last year.
The $2.2 trillion economic recovery bill that President Trump signed into law will temporarily prevent mass layoffs and furloughs at major domestic airlines, said Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which lobbied Congress to pass the legislation.
But that doesn’t put travelers in the seats.
With 250 million Americans under stay-at-home orders, pilots are on a new assignment: set the birds down to park at far-flung airports. The first to go were the widebody jumbo jets, particularly any relatively old and inefficient models, such as the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A340.
Last weekend, Qantas and KLM operated what probably will be their last scheduled 747 flights — a model that KLM had operated for 49 years and planned to retire in 2021.
American is accelerating the retirement of its once ubiquitous Boeing 767 and 757s; Delta Air Lines is planning the same for its McDonnell Douglas MD-88s and MD-90s. Retiring these older models can save the airlines money as they focus on operating with newer, more efficient jets.
But Delta is also parking efficient, smaller jets, including its Boeing 717 fleet, and newer long-haul planes, such as the Airbus A350, as it downsizes to try to weather the industry storm.
And many pilots worry that entire aircraft types will be retired, leaving their careers in limbo.
Where planes are being parked
View from above: In recent days, satellites have captured newly parked planes at airports worldwide. Satellite images via Planet Labs (Birmingham Airport in Alabama; Pinal Airpark in Arizona; Roswell, N.M.; Tulsa Airport; Victorville, Calif.) and Maxar Technologies (Mobile, Ariz.; Copenhagen Airport; Charles de Gaulle Airport in France; Frankfurt Airport in Germany; Denver)
Finding enough parking spaces requires creativity.
In Copenhagen, airport authorities are closing taxiways to house some of the Scandinavian Airlines fleet. Lufthansa is using a new airport in Berlin that hasn’t opened yet and a runway in Frankfurt. American Airlines is putting planes in the parking lot at its maintenance facility in Tulsa as it and other airlines fly their fleets to storage in Mobile and Birmingham in Alabama and Roswell, N.M.
View from the ground: To limit the spread of the coronavirus, U.S. and international carriers are significantly reducing flights, and some planes may never return to service. From left, starting with Heathrow: Toby Melville/Reuters; Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters; Nick Oxford/Reuters; Dan Anderson/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock; Ross D. Franklin/AP; Etienne Laurent/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock; Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters; Martin Sylvest/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Eric Jordan hopes all this chaos is temporary. The longtime pilot with a major U.S. airline has navigated all kinds of downturns, mergers and bankruptcies and thinks the airlines will bounce back once the pandemic subsides. The massive $2.2 trillion stimulus bill, with about $50 billion earmarked for the industry, is intended to help.
For now, he’s not sure he’ll get back up in the air before May, at the soonest.
It’s worse for the rising class of pilots in the pipeline, waiting to go from regional airlines to the so-called majors, such as Delta and American, Jordan said. They’re in limbo.
“I feel for these guys, these younger guys,” he said.
And although a “tsunami wave of pilot retirements” and buyouts may make way for others, and blunt some need for furloughs and layoffs, “last hired, first fired” still applies to those at the bottom of the ladder, said Dennis Tajer, a Boeing 737 captain and spokesman for the labor union that represents American Airlines pilots.
“What makes this time different than other shocks to the system,” he said, is the number of pilots “on the cusp of having to retire, that’s actually going to help.”
More than 600 American Airlines pilots close to retirement age took a “voluntary permanent leave of absence” the airline offered to stave off furloughs and layoffs, at least for the time being. Those pilots will receive 50 hours of pay per month through age 65 and keep their benefits. Although the offer was attractive to many, social media accounts last weekend were full of posts from pilots who didn’t get to fly their last flight, which typically involves a firetruck water hose salute after landing.
Instead, they went from thinking retirement was months or years away to suddenly handing in their wings.
The unexpected shift and uncertainty is especially problematic for pilots, Tajer said.
Their profession requires and rewards certitude, which is derived from experience as well as precision, procedures and processes. And it attracts men and women who crave that.
“We may be unique in the license that we carry and the training we have,” Tajer said of the upheaval. “But we’re not unique to the human experience."
Lori Aratani and Michael Laris contributed to this report. Editing by Ann Gerhart.
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