Story ID: 025
Pandemic Spurs Massive Aviation Changes
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on aviation is difficult to measure, but clearly enormously significant.  
Word Count: 335
Aviation has always been ready to help out when times are tough, and the coronavirus pandemic is no exception, with the industry pulling out all the stops not only for its survival but also to help those in need.

Examples include AeroBridge coordinating flying supplies to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Corporate Angel Network transporting patients for cancer treatment, Angel Flight (in various regions of the U.S.), and Patient Airlift Services, along with many others. And now charity operations and aircraft owners and operators are helping move personal protective equipment (PPE) around the world where it is needed most during the pandemic and companies like VistaJet are offering free empty legs for needful passengers. Other laudable efforts are seen in companies like Honeywell, Universal Avionics, Avfuel, Boeing, Tecnam, and many others manufacturing PPE. Among other efforts, Safe Flight Instrument devoted engineering and manufacturing resources to devising new technologies for medical equipment, an additive-manufactured Quad/Vent Splitter, which could allow a ventilator to serve up to four patients.

Government entities, which normally are recalcitrant when it comes to rules and policies, are doing their best to help aviation because they understand the essential nature of all segments of the industry. So far, regulators in many regions and countries have pushed back constraints for pilot training and medical certification and other rapidly approaching deadlines, and reports indicate that there should be more relief coming. Governments have cut taxes and onerous slot-use rules and freed up funds to help minimize the impact on redundant personnel.

Certainly, there is bad news along with the good, for example, JetNet projects that 2020 business jet deliveries will drop 40 to 50 percent. And while there was a bump in business aircraft and charter travel early in the pandemic, that appears to have dropped, concurrent with the extreme restrictions put in place by many countries, a number of which prevent non-citizen travelers from entering their countries.

Additional coverage of the Covid-19 impact continues on page 00.