ABSTRACT
The airline industry is one of the largest essential industries around the globe, and has been severely affected by COVID-19 pandemic. The demand for passenger air transport decreased dramatically during the pandemic due to international and domestic travel restrictions, whereas cargo transport experienced an unsurprising increase. This paper studies the impact of COVID-19 on US domestic airlines in two categories: Legacy - American, Delta, Southwest, and United;and Cargo - FedEx and UPS. Analysis of the financial performance ratios and changes to these, both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic, is conducted and the financial performance is analyzed in five major categories (e.g. liquidity, leverage, efficiency, profitability, and market value ratios). This paper also reports empirical comparison results between financial performance of passenger and cargo airlines. The data for analysis is obtained from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Wharton Research Data Services, and Yahoo! Finance. The results in this paper may be valuable for airlines and other air transport providers as they seek to understand pandemic response/behavior, or make decisions to increase their resilience. Engineering managers involved in financial resource management decision-making may use this information in their efforts to understand the financial performance dynamics during a global pandemic, and create the greatest value for their organizations. © American Society for Engineering Management, 2021