Title: COVID-19 Battered the Aviation Industry, Is the US Prepared if it
Happens Again?

Description: U.S. commercial airline traffic dropped 96% during peak
pandemic times. In response, the federal government (the taxpayers)
provided $132 billion in financial assistance to the industry and
related businesses. Today, the industry has largely rebounded. But what
happens next time? Are there any lessons we can learn to avoid some of
the challenges seen during COVID?  GAO's Heather Krause discusses our
new report on lessons learned from the pandemic.

Related work: GAO-24-106754, Commercial Aviation: Key Lessons from
COVID-19 Preparedness and Emergency Financial Assistance to the Industry

Released: March 2024

{Music}

[Heather Krause:] We need to prepare now for a future pandemics. When
there isn't a plan or clear guidance and communication in place,
confusion can really ensue.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for
fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs.

Commercial airline traffic in the U.S dropped dramatically during the
pandemic. In response, the federal government provided billions of
dollars in financial assistance to the industry and related businesses. 

Today, the industry has largely rebounded. But what happens next time?
Are there any lessons we can learn to avoid some of the challenges seen
during COVID? 

Here to tell us more about a new report that looks at just that is GAO's
Heather Krause, an expert on aviation industries and the managing
director of our Physical Infrastructure team. Thanks for joining us.

[Heather Krause:] Thanks for having me. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Heather, this report provides an update on almost a
decade's worth of work we've done asking for the Department of
Transportation to take action and prepare for an event like COVID-19.
What's can you tell us about that, and what's the status of DOT's
efforts now? we've done a lot of work and made recommendations to DOD
even before COVID, back in 2015, we had recommended the Department of
Transportation take steps to respond to an event like COVID.
Specifically, we wanted them to develop a national preparedness plan,
right. But they didn't. What's the status of DOT's efforts now? 

[Heather Krause:] Yes. So we had recommended back in 2015 an idea to
develop a national preparedness plan for communicable disease threats in
aviation. So although that was well before COVID, there had been
outbreaks, such as SARS and Ebola, which had shown how vulnerable the
aviation system is to communicable disease threats. Communicable
diseases can easily travel from one part of the globe to another through
air travel. So that type of plan and being prepared to respond as a
communicable disease threat emerges is really important.

DOT at the time had agreed with a recommendation saying it was good. But
thought that the Departments of Homeland Security or the Health and
Human Services, with their authority and expertise in the areas of
emergency response and public health, should take the lead. So once the
COVID-19 pandemic started, we again emphasized the importance of having
a pandemic preparedness plan. The absence of that kind of plan
undermined the ability of the public health and aviation sectors to
coordinate on a response or provide consistent guidance to the airports
and airlines. And had such a plan been in place that might have reduced
some of that confusion that we saw among aviation stakeholders and
passengers early in the pandemic.

So DOT has now started to make some progress on that plan and expects to
issue it at the end of this calendar year. 

[Holly Hobbs:] And our report looked at two buckets or two areas of
preparedness--the public health side, right, the preventing the spread
of diseases, and then the financial costs or disruption side. Maybe we
can start with public health. When it comes to preventing the spread of
diseases, what lessons learned can the Department of Transportation gain
from COVID? 

[Heather Krause:] Yes. So in addition to leadership, federal leadership
in developing a pandemic preparedness plan, we've also found that
increased federal leadership around research and development could
better help prevent the spread of disease in air travel. We issued a
report back in 2022 where we identified research at the time on
communicable diseases and air travel. That included how, air moves in an
aircraft and the effect of different airline operations on disease
transmission. B ut stakeholders that we spoke with told us that more
real world research is needed that incorporates factors such as human
behavior. So how folks move through an aircraft. How that might affect
disease transmission, as well as some of the challenges that they face
in conducting that kind of research, like lack of access to aircraft or
data. That led us to recommending to Congress that they direct the
Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, to develop and implement a
strategy to identify and advance needed research when it comes to
communicable disease in air travel.

To date, Congress hasn't passed that legislation, but FAA has told us,
in the meantime, that they're starting to find ways to identify research
needed and  including in integrating some of the communicable disease
threats into their safety risk management process.

Those types of steps can improve not only existing guidance, but also
future policies and regulations when it comes to being prepared for any
other future communicable disease outbreak. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So that's the public health side. But the industry
experienced a lot of financial losses too, and the federal government
helped with some of that. Is there a way to prepare for those
disruptions better? 

[Heather Krause:] You know when the pandemic hit, the aviation industry
had a profound impact in terms of the drop in traffic. In April 2020,
saw a 96% decline in traffic over the previous year. As a result, that
led the Congress to provide $132 billion to the aviation industry,
including the airlines, airports and other businesses. That was really
to help them kind of sustain operations to get through that large
financial impact that they experienced. I think implementing the
recommendations that we have made around just better preparing,
improving preparedness, thinking about research would better position
DOT and other aviation stakeholders to address emerging communicable
disease threat while minimizing those types of disruptions to the
aviation system that we saw with COVID.

In addition, in situations where we are providing financial assistance
to the industry, we did find--because we were routinely monitoring and
reporting and examining the funds as they were being awarded and
overseen during the pandemic--we found some key lessons. 

We found that the agencies--the Department of Transportation
Treasury--quickly distributed funds, but the internal controls to really
oversee those funds were not always in place in a timely manner. Second,
we found that there were multiple programs, multiple paths that may
better serve businesses of varied sizes and types. So there were a broad
range of aviation businesses that were eligible for financial assistance
from ticket agents all the way to passenger airlines that have tens of
thousands of employees. And those large airlines really viewed that
program favorably. But the smaller businesses reported some challenges
to accessing those types of funds. So really thinking about how to
design those programs during future pandemics and better position and
kind of improve our response. 

{Music} 

[Holly Hobbs:] Heather just told us that while we recommended in 2015
the Department of Transportation take steps to prepare for an event like
COVID-19, it didn't. But that doing so now is just as important as ever.
So, Heather, what more do we think the Department of Transportation
should be doing to better prepare the aviation industry for the next
public health crisis? 

[Heather Krause:] It's really important for the Department of
Transportation to follow through on the implementation and development
of a national aviation preparedness plan. You know, DOT is telling us
that they are now working on it. And it's also been required by
legislation that they follow through on it. But the fact remains that
it's been 9 years since we made that recommendation initially to develop
a plan and 4 years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That plan
needs to get done and be in place so we are better prepared. It's also
important that DOT you learn from the experiences of COVID-19 by
incorporating lessons from this experience into the plan. That would
really better position the agencies involved, the industry like airports
and airlines, to work together in the face of any future communicable
disease outbreak. And really, ideally, this type of prep work should be
done now, while the lessons of from COVID-19 are relatively fresh. 

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question What's the bottom line of this report? 

[Heather Krause:] We need to prepare now for a future pandemics. You
know, as what we found with COVID-19, when there isn't a plan or clear
guidance and communication in place, confusion can really ensue by
learning from COVID 19. Now, the federal government can take steps to
mitigate unnecessary disruptions to aviation in future pandemics.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Heather Krause talking about GAO's recent report
on the aviation industry. Thanks for your time, Heather. 

[Heather Krause:] Thanks Holly. 

{Music}

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
wherever you listen and make sure to leave a rating and review to let
others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional
watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at
GAO.gov.