The Edition
facebook icon twitter icon instagram icon linkedin icon

Latest

Aviation Industry Trends for 2022

Mohamed Rehan
09 February 2022, MVT 13:40
Aviation industry expect transformative changes in 2022 -- Photo: The Financial Express
Mohamed Rehan
09 February 2022, MVT 13:40

The year did not start properly and a new variant of the Covid-19 virus was across the horizon, putting dents on prospective plans of growth in various economic industries. One such area that felt the new Omicron variant’s blow was perhaps the aviation industry.

However, despite the growing woes, new restrictive measures and stronger efforts of vaccination push are shaping up for possibly positive transformation for the aviation industry in the year ahead.

We are going to look at some of the possible trends that might kick off during various points of the current 2022 based on the opinions of industry experts as well as industry speculation.

Reduction of aviation industry losses

Following the global-wide lockdown measures in 2020, one of the areas that fell hard and deep was without a doubt the aviation sector. Flights were grounded without any further notices of resumption in operations.

Several international airlines observed a heavy decline in their flight movement numbers, which was reflected in their respective financials.

However, some of the industry experts are now hopeful that things are about to turn a positive page. According to the latest updates from International Air Transport Association (IATA), global airlines have indeed started to project a reduction in industry losses for 2022. Moreover, international travel numbers are even touted to reach almost half or close to pre-pandemic levels.

Improved cleaning procedures

The airline industry’s cleaning standards saw a considerable ‘face-lift’ following the Covid-19 pandemic. Airlines that previously were not big on UV technology-based cleaning apparatuses have started to procure such equipment heavily. There has been visible investment across the industry, in UV technology-based cleaning apparatuses that ensure high levels of cleanliness.

It is also expected that more airlines will integrate and utilize more stringent clean protocols such as sanitization of high-use touchpoints, aircraft fogging, and increased usage of High-Efficiency Particulate Air Filters as well as the continued use of PPE by aircrews.

Digitization of travel health records

We are living in strange times. Today, a person’s health records should not entirely be private records. Especially if people have had been patients of highly viral epidemical diseases. There should be adequate dissemination of said information, relayed to relevant authorities – and one of the relevant industries that could use the information in the aviation industry.

The next potential trend attached to aviation would be the digitization of health records (vaccine passports) and their integration in the travel process. This digitization of health records and procedures will prove effective in restoring consumer confidence as well as ensuring safer and quicker air travel.

There is industry-wide speculation that airlines, airports, and aviation authorities in unison are working towards improving their processes based on automation and increasing digitization.

Blockchains specific for aviation industry

Blockchains are in their most basic description, digital ledgers of transactions that are duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain. Each of these blocks in a digital chain contains several transactions, and newer transactions are added to new blocks that are linked to the previous block thus forming the chain. This decentralized database management by multiple participants is known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Blockchain technology holds massive potentiality of progressive growth for the aviation industry because of its unique ability to share information instantaneously, securely, and privately between dozens of stakeholders across different airports, governments, airlines, aviation authorities, and even original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

The transactions related to aircraft spare parts with regards to their tracking and tracing between airlines, lessors, and OEMs are predominantly a manual process. This hinders the process by adding excessive time consumption on tracking movement of spare parts as well as the lack of a linear view of ‘how to track hundreds of millions of records of transactions between’ the corporate entities. Blockchain technology is ‘revered’ as the most efficient digital solution of the modern world to eliminate these issues.

Share this story

Topics

Aviation Tourism

Discuss

MORE ON TRAVEL