The Fall of Air Travel and Its Effects on Millions of Jobs Due to COVID-19

Traveling by air is one of the fastest and most convenient ways to move from one city to another, widely adopted by business people, holidaymakers, delegates from various countries, and many other categories of individuals across the world.

The airline industry has rapidly grown over the years, with investors injecting large sums of funds in airline companies like British Airways, Emirates Airline, Qantas Airways, and many others. Investors expect a return on their investment from selling tickets to billions of travelers traveling each year to visit families, tour, and attend business meetings.

The industry serves clients in almost every part of the world, and this has created jobs in Airlines for individuals directly as pilots, cabin crew, flight attendants, and airport staff. There are also jobs created indirectly that include; waiters and waitresses in tourist and business hotels, tour guides, travel agencies, aircraft, and engine manufacturers.

Early this year (2020), the COVID-19 global pandemic started in Asia spread to the rest of the world like a bushfire, making it hard to utilize public transport. In response, the governments of different states worldwide took the responsibility of protecting their citizens from the deadly virus.

Borders and airports were put under lockdown to fight the spread of the virus. Airlines and airports being the most infected places, shut down immediately. A few cargo planes were allowed to continue operation, which left jobless men and women with families to feed and Airlines registering huge business losses as this kind of disaster was neither expected nor insured. 

In July this year, Aljazeera’s publication indicated that about 400,000 global airline jobs were lost or are at risk of being lost due to the virus. Delta Air Lines Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc., and American Airlines Group Inc. warned about 35,000 employees that their jobs are at risk.

In industries related to the airline, the International Air Transport Association remarked that job losses among aircraft and engine makers, travel agencies would reach 25 million and 7.5 million jobs lost in the hotels and lodging sector.

This implies that families of over 400,000 employees, directly and indirectly, earning a living from the airlines have since March had to change their ways of life by possibly spending less on their welfare than it was before they got laid off from their jobs.

Several Airline companies, both local and international that have not been in business for over six months of the total global lockdown. In September, even significant airlines are still coming out to announce that more employees are likely to be furloughed, sent on unpaid leave or salaries of the remaining employed staff like pilots, cabin crew engineers, and flight attendants will be reduced. 

By the end of September, lockdowns initially imposed on air travel and airports were being lifted in some states that found it as a necessary option to save their economies. This brings a little hope to some of the airline industry’s beneficiaries and the depressed travelers and business people. They got stuck in foreign countries and have not been evacuated by their respective governments.