9/11, SARS And The 2008 Global Downturn: Black Swan Events In Aviation History Before COVID-19
March 12, 2021
It is no longer news that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive and devastating impact on the world aviation industry. More than a year later, many countries are still in lockdown and planes are still grounded.
However, this wouldn’t be the first time the aviation industry has been hit hard. Take a look at three black swan events in the 2000s that threw the aviation industry into turmoil.
2001: 9/11 Attacks
While traffic suffered globally following the attacks, the impact was far more pronounced in the U.S. than elsewhere. 9/11 cost U.S. airlines $55 billion in losses and the jobs of 160,000 dedicated and skilled workers. With each airline job driving the creation of 12 to 15 additional jobs, the loss of so many employees has been critical for the entire economy. It took U.S. legacy airlines nearly a decade to recover enough to begin focusing on re-fleeting.
SARS caused the airline industry billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, and nearly felled many Asian carriers. According to IATA, SARS caused the only annual decline in Asia-Pacific traffic in almost two decades before 2003.
Hong Kong was the hardest hit by the crisis but bounced back rapidly in 2004.
The world airline industry posted a net profit in 2007, for the first year since 2000. Unfortunately, the return to net profitability was short-lived. The airline recovery began to stall in early 2008, and conditions generally worsened over the course of the year. Airlines dropped capacity back to 2000 levels in the 2008 global crisis. Carriers stemmed their losses in 2010 but still struggled to make money as they were faced with near-record high oil prices, low-cost carrier competition, and legacy labor contracts.
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