Analysis of the Impacts of COVID-19 on US Airline Schedule Planning and Service Delivery, 2018 to 2022

This chapter examines business resilience and capacity management by US airlines during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It analyzes matched data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics and daily flight schedules from the Official Airline Guide to compare disruption impacts across different airport categories and airlines. Simple, scalable measures of resilience are introduced, utilizing average and standard deviation measures relative to pre-pandemic periods. Airlines adjusted their capacity offerings swiftly in response to the pandemic-induced demand collapse, with substantial disruption initially but followed by stabilization. Throughout 2020 and 2021, there were more schedule variations compared to the post-pandemic periods of 2022 and 2023. Low-cost carriers (LCCs) rebounded faster than full-service carriers (FSCs), with smaller LCCs showing the quickest recovery, expanding operations notably at smaller airports. Consequently, smaller airports regained pre-pandemic traffic levels faster than major ones focused on big FSC networks. Analysis reveals that while the largest airports often have more flights scheduled than performed, medium and smaller airports tend to have more flights performed than scheduled, albeit with higher variability for medium ones. The study argues that the airline scheduling process proved resilient and adaptable to the significant and prolonged disruption caused by the pandemic.