Quantifying the Effects of COVID-19 on US Carriers Engaged in International Aviation from 2020-2022

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 saw governments around the world introduce stringent disease containment measures such as the closure of national borders quickly followed by a substantial reduction in international travel. This had an immediate catastrophic effect on international aviation. This paper establishes trends in key passenger and cargo metrics for US carriers engaged in international aviation from 2011-2022, using primary operational data sourced from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The downturn that resulted from the spread of COVID-19 during 2020, 2021, and 2022 is assessed here by comparing the actual reported data against extrapolated forecast data representative of the normal growth and performance that would otherwise have occurred in the absence of COVID-19. The extrapolation process used an Exponential Smoothing technique that was freely available within the MS Excel Data Forecast toolbar. The sum of the monthly differences between the reported data and the extrapolated data allows the impact of COVID-19 to be fully quantified. Overall, this research has determined from key metrics that in round figures US-centric international travel suffered a loss of 145 million passengers and 490 billion Revenue Passenger Miles as a result of travel restrictions and public safety concerns during the pandemic period of interest. In addition, the total US-centric international air cargo tonnage decreased by 410,000 short tons and the loss in Revenue Ton Miles amounted to 2,531 million short ton miles. These figures provide a salutary benchmark against which future risk mitigation and emergency planning strategies can be assessed.