COVID-19 and Global Passenger Airline Bankruptcies 2020 to 2022

Abstract

After the COVID-19 pandemic and worldwide government shutdowns took place in early 2020, many questioned the solvency of the passenger airline industry. This paper studies global airline bankruptcies in the two years from the beginning of the crisis and models the financial sufficiency of the largest U.S.-based passenger airlines to try to model the industrywide pressure that was borne from an exogenous shock with such a high magnitude.