An examination is conducted of airline strategies during the covid-19 pandemic using data from the United States. Our findings show that airlines pursued diverse strategies in terms of route entry and retention, pricing, and load factors. At the route level, a more detailed examination is conducted of the performance of a middle-seat blocking strategy designed to increase the safety of air travel. We show that this strategy (i.e., not making middle seats available to passengers) likely resulted in revenue losses for carriers, an estimated US $3,300 per flight. This revenue loss provides an indication as to why the middle seat blocking strategy was discontinued by all US airlines despite ongoing safety concerns.

使用来自美国的数据对 covid-19 大流行期间的航空公司策略进行了检查。我们的研究结果表明，航空公司在航线进入和保留、定价和载客率方面采取了多样化的策略。在航线层面，对旨在提高航空旅行安全性的中间座位阻塞策略的性能进行了更详细的检查。我们表明，这种策略（即不为乘客提供中间座位）可能导致承运人的收入损失，估计每次航班损失 3,300 美元。这一收入损失表明，尽管存在持续的安全问题，但所有美国航空公司都停止了中间座位阻塞策略。