Challenge Host
Relevant Sectors
Government, policy makers, health, aviation, travel and tourism, general public
What are you looking to achieve?
Using various datasets (e.g. COVID-19 death rates by country/region, historical and current passenger traffic volumes and RPKs, government travel restrictions, ADS-B data, historical aviation gross value add estimates by country/region, etc) we seek to understand the relationship between COVID-19 transmission (validated against reported data on COVID-19 deaths) and resumption of aviation economic activity – and how this relationship is likely to change based on:
- Different measures that could be implemented by governments: governments can limit travel domestically (via lockdowns) and internationally (via border closures). What is the impact of different levels of border restrictions and internal lockdowns on COVID-19 induced deaths and the economic impact of aviation’s recovery?
- Different measures that could be implemented by airlines: a number of measures are popularly under discussion, from onboard social distancing (i.e., leaving middle seats empty between passengers), to all passengers and crew wearing PPE, to PCR testing before flights. What is the impact of widespread use of each of these measures on COVID-19 induced deaths and the economic impact of aviation’s recovery?
- Scenarios based on a range of COVID-19 transmission likelihoods during the entire end-to-end lifetime of a given journey to analyse how ‘air bridges’ will affect net COVID-19 cases during summer 2020.
What will be the Value and Impact?
Aviation underpins society and the economy – yet, it was a key vector for SARS-CoV-2 transmission, inadvertently exporting the virus all over the world.
As the world recovers from the crisis, the risk of a second wave or re-infection (with the original or mutated version of the virus) remains very real.
The speed at which air corridors are reopened is crucial in managing this risk: a main objective of this charter is to relate global health risk to the economic benefits associated with resumption of air travel to allow better decision making.
