Twenty years after American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 obliterated the World Trade Center and carved an indelible spot in our collective conscience, American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, all followed by the heroic passenger fightback on United flight 93, which dove into the sod of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the airline industry — and the globe — are dealing with stubborn challenges.
While the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights in the country that morning, and all the yellow blips of airlines on radar screens faded to black, the global aviation industry in 2020 and 2021 — and with variants who knows for how much longer — saw Covid retire chunks of their fleets, and passenger traffic whipsaw based on lockdowns, restrictions, and an almost, but not quite, innate instinct to travel, and see the world.
One lesson from 9/11 — and the Great Recession — is that the airline industry and the country will be back, albeit in altered states.
“Almost two decades ago, demand similarly evaporated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks led to a nationwide grounding and fear of flying that persisted for several years,” wrote Beth Daley of the Conversation US in 2020.
After a couple of years, with bolstered cockpit doors and security equipments staffed by a new Transportation Security Administration, “the airline industry eventually did recover, and Americans once again were flying in record numbers,” Daley wrote.
As of July 2021, according to the airline trade group IATA, passenger traffic showed “significant momentum” compared to the prior month, “but demand remained far below pre-pandemic levels” as restrictions and lockdowns delay recovery.
But many predict there will be a record recovery if Covid and its joint venture variant partners ever get under wraps.
The U.S. airline industry of 2021 doesn’t resemble the carrier field of 9/11…