


The second article explores what airline executives could consider doing to generate more value for their carriers-for instance, examining their cost base and accelerating capital turnover. This article, the first in a two-part series, provides an overview of global aviation’s performance during the pandemic, by subsector. Although the temptation is to pin the blame solely on the pandemic-induced plunge in passenger traffic, that would be to ignore the airline industry’s underlying and long-term health problems.

The COVID-19 pandemic is entering its endemic stages in some parts of the world at the time of writing, and airlines hemorrhaged $168 billion in economic losses in 2020.
