Under COVID19 global restrictions on air travel, economic recession and falling consumer demand have had a significant impact on the airline industry. In response airlines globally have downsized their fleets, reduced staffing levels, and cut routes, capacity, and schedules. While some countries, such as New Zealand and China, have seen their domestic aviation markets return to some form of normalcy even in those countries’ airlines are still not operating at pre-COVID levels. Moving forward in a post-COVID world airlines’ face the challenge of rebuilding their fleets, networks, schedules, and service products. How they do so will depend upon a range of internal and external factors. What do you have to do? To complete this assignment, you must write a formal academic essay that investigates and discusses how airlines will/could recover post-COVID. That essay needs to investigate (a) how airlines will manage the restoration/revival of their operations (fleet, schedules, routes etc) to meet changing demand and market conditions, and (b) the internal (i.e. organisational) and external challenges they will face when doing so. In completing the essay, you should draw upon the lessons provided by airline recovery in China and New Zealand as to how airlines globally could and/or should attempt to return to pre-COVID operational activity. Consequently, your essay should emphasise the strategic alternatives available to airlines, and the most practicable approach they should take when managing their recovery.
