Articles

2020/21 will go down in the history books as the airline industry’s most turbulent period to date, with massive fluxes in passenger volumes globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Regaining passenger confidence has become a critical factor for airlines to weather the ongoing economic storm and remain competitive in the uncertain year’s ahead.

Many businesses were in the midst of implementing operational changes to function in the new UK/EU trading environment, when the COVID-19 pandemic affected the world in an unprecedented way. However, ahead of the industry is the Transition Period which will last until 31st December 2020. Until that time, UK airlines remain part of EASA and subject to the requirements of EU-Ops; operations to and from the EU 27 countries remain unhindered. However, there is much to achieve and a whole host of agreements have to be set in place if the United Kingdom are to exit the EU in an orderly fashion. It is possible that the UK could leave the EU with no agreement in place (a hard BREXIT). This raises the spectre of what happens to the UK aviation industry in the event of a no-deal exit?

Whilst there are hopeful signs of increased demand for air services, it is also clear that emerging from the pandemic, airlines will need to make fundamental changes to the way they operate.

The global pandemic has had an unparalleled and devastating impact on the aviation industry, with a dramatic decline in demand, drastic reduction of fleets, significant headcount reductions and an accelerated closure of airlines. However, as airlines begin to return to a ‘new normal’ - how can they adapt to the new reality – becoming leaner, stream-lined and more operationally efficient? 

As the world ponders its future after COVID-19, many are wondering how and when things will get back to normal. Undoubtedly, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on commercial aviation has been, and will continue to be, unprecedented in its scale and scope, affecting airlines everywhere, in a more interconnected world.  In this article, I discuss my views on how the future might look for airlines as the COVID-19 crisis ebbs, exploring the outlook following this economic tsunami and how airlines will need to re-engineer their operations to both thrive and survive.

In today’s technological age, it’s unsurprising that digital transformation is one of the most fundamental drivers of change, presenting a unique chance to shape the future. For this reason, a large proportion of the airline industry is looking to digitise their technical documentation and maintenance operations to make for easier document management.