Skift Take
There were naysayers after 9/11 that said people would never fly again in droves out of security concerns, and now Covid and its variant joint-venture partners have rocked the travel industry. History has shown, however, that "travel" and the human spirit are indomitable.
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 quit
