Have we already returned to ‘business as usual’? Post‑pandemic situation on the aviation market on the example of Poland, Portugal and Brazil, in the light of global trends

Abstract

The aim of the article is to examine the scale of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by using a comparative analysis of statistical data for the years 2020–2021 compared to 2019. It was hypothesized that the crisis did not have an equal impact on regional markets and groups of aviation market companies. The situation was analyzed both in global terms, while selected countries from different regions of the world (Poland, Portugal and Brazil) were examined in detail. It has been proven that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the image of aviation, and the crisis caused by the pandemic was a disaster for this market manifested by a significant drop in values of analyzed operating indicators. However, the scale of decline in individual regions of the world varied and depended on local conditions occurring in individual countries. There was also a variation in the size of decrease between groups of companies operating on the aviation market. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has shown huge changes on the aviation map of the world. China became the world market leader in terms of many indicators (including the largest airport in the world in terms of the number of passengers served) – in previous years the United States dominated in this respect. Further development of the market situation is an extremely interesting issue to be analyzed in the forthcoming years.