14 AVIATION
Crisis or opportunity Covid-19 and development of aircraft maintenance technicians Pramote Anunvrapong
To review the current and future aviation situation, it is impor tant to look back at the past, especially prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. A decade earlier, the aviation industr y experienced a ver y high rate of growth in all areas, par ticular ly in the passenger side, which grew by 5 to 6 per cent a year with the creation of new airlines, in every region until the aircraft manufacturing companies could barely keep up with the bookings. As a result, the delivery of each aircraft takes years. The number of planes in service around the world surged to more than 20,000 in 2019. However, that happened in the past, to which the industry is waiting for a return. At the end of 2019 an unexpected event happened – the appearance of the coronavirus, known as the Covid-19 pandemic, which escalated at the beginning of 2020. The pandemic has had an adverse effect on the
UPDATE 4/2020
aviation industry because of the panic caused among tourists and people travelling from affected areas. At the end of the first quarter of 2020, the outbreak began spreading rapidly, with many cities being placed in lockdown in many countries. As a result, international travel, especially for tourism, stopped abruptly in the second quarter of this year, which had a huge impact on the aviation industry – with the number of flights decreased to just 30 per cent of the flights in the previous year. The 2020 Covid-19 outbreak has had a serious negative impact on the global aviation industry. The tremendous decline in the number s of passenger s have made it impossible for the airlines to operate. In par ticular, air lines that mainly operate international flights have been affected much more seriously. It has been repor ted that airline bankruptcy filings continued in the middle of this year, and many airlines were
facing possible bankruptcy because of the lack of financial liquidity to continue their business. Many airlines that are still in business have taken measures to cut costs by decreasing the salary of all personnel as well as creating incentives to accept resignations or leave without pay. Some airlines stopped paying salaries because they had no work, but retained their contracts pending the recovery of the industry. The current situation has remained the same at the end of the third quarter of this year. The Covid-19 pandemic has escalated. The number of infected people worldwide has exceeded 30 million. Some countries are experiencing second and third outbreaks. Consequently, international travel is still seriously disr upted, together with the economic recession, the tourism industry has been severely affected. Looking back, the aviation industry is beginning to see some
