Ready for takeoff
The COVID pandemic may not necessarily be over by certain definitions, but the removal of mask mandates has been a welcome change. Further, pent up demand is filling airports and airplanes to nearly full capacity. Empty seats are hard to come by, and cheap ones harder still. Plenty of people are still opting to wear masks, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
At this point, the airlines are like many other businesses and are trying to make up for lost ground. Summer vacation bookings have outpaced airlines’ capacities, and the all-important business travelers are coming back in healthy numbers. Hotels, restaurants, and parks are all either full or very nearly so.
If the last two years have taught us nothing else, it needs to be that we all need a new definition of a rainy day. The airlines based their worst-case planning on a 9/11-type of event. A pandemic, even after SARS, never really entered the equation. This has since been corrected, as pretty much every business has had to redo their plan to take into account everything from a long shutdown to being partially open. On an individual level, we all need to do the same.
Americans right now are sitting on record sums of cash waiting to be spent, and travel is at the top of the list after being so restricted for the past two years. Airplanes are finally being delivered again, which is a huge relief especially to Boeing in light of the fiascos with the 737 MAX and the 787 Dreamliner. For prospective pilots, the horizon is suddenly looking much better. The airlines are scrambling to hire as many as possible, and for those who may want an aviation career without necessarily wanting to fly, there are ample other opportunities. United Airlines recently held a job fair in Chicago that had lines going out the door, and it has already hired 6,000 people this year. The carrier is on track to hire almost more than 2,000 pilots in 2022.
The more disciplined management of the post-deregulation era is paying big dividends. Back in the day, we would have seen far more furloughs, massive pay and benefit cuts, and probably several failed airlines. Smarter revenue management, smarter asset decisions, and far more sophisticated computing capabilities have allowed for more control over potential losses. On top of that, the CARES Act monies have been a huge help in keeping skilled labor available to handle rebounds.
This is an exciting time for aviation, from the general aviation ranks all the way up to the heavy iron. Let’s hope that it continues in a way that everyone can thrive.
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