Airlines Are Facing an Ethical Dilemma

U.S. airlines are entering a critical juncture now that the summer season is here, schools are out, and air travel is literally heating up.

Perhaps more than that, however, domestic carriers are staring down an ethical and moral dilemma.

How do the airlines reconcile getting back to pre-pandemic passenger capacity with risky pandemic staffing decisions that have resulted in post-pandemic chaos?

It’s an enigma, to be sure.

Because if I was an airline executive, I would be equal parts giddy and embarrassed at the same time.

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Giddy – and thrilled and grateful – that the public’s pent-up demand for travel after two-plus years of COVID-19 has exploded. In fact, as much as we in the media have adopted and embraced the catchphrase ‘pent-up demand,’ it’s a misnomer. ‘Pent-up demand’ is described by economists as the public’s desire to return to a certain aspect of consumerism. The inability to travel wasn’t pent-up; this is more like Criss Angel/David Blaine escaping chained-up air-tight boxes kind of stuff.

Domestic carriers are currently riding a wave that has brought passenger traffic to within 10 percent, and sometimes single digits, of the same capacity that flew on airplanes in pre-pandemic 2019. As of Sunday, June 19, there have been 15 consecutive days that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened more than 2 million passengers and 20 of the last 21. How could you not be happy about that?

But not too happy.

Airline executives made a lot of mistakes during the pandemic that are now coming back to haunt them. After receiving the government bailout money, and waiting the mandated time before instituting layoffs and buyouts, carriers went for the quick fix of saving even more payroll by offering early retirement to employees and consolidating staffs. Combined with the mandatory pilot retirement age that caused a void in the flight deck, you suddenly had a staff shortage.

And delays.

And cancellations.

And chaos.

And a severe backlash from the general public and even the federal government.

This is a prickly situation, to say the least. Of course, airlines should enjoy the resurgence of air travel, despite having to make some tough staffing decisions at the height of a global pandemic that caused an industry-wide loss of more than $140 billion in 2020.

At the same time, they can’t celebrate the repercussions of some of those difficult decisions. Because right now, air travel is going through an unprecedented situation – and not a good one. When the Secretary of the Department of Transportation has a flight canceled and is forced to drive, you know it’s bad.

For now, the airlines need a quiet moment of triumph that passenger traffic is back, but a public display of trying to resolve the dilemma only they created.

It’s the least they can do.