Financial recovery of aviation businesses during the COVID-19 economic recession

In many aspects, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the world economy. Preventive measures were mostly motivated by the avoidance of human interaction, such as lockdowns or social distance practices. The fact disrupted the usual flows of economic activities, imposing financial pressure on individuals and enterprises. The study attempted to illustrate how corporations, working in the severely damaged industry – aviation, managed to survive through the financial year 2020. The author inductively collected and processed data under the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the research, secondary data sources were acquired from credible literature and electronic data banks, while primary information was collected from company official fillings and a valid interview with an industry expert. The quantitative method of financial analysis was used to assess the financial situations of Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and Finnair throughout the outbreak. Overall, COVID-19 revealed the bottleneck of the modern economy. Ever before, the importance of government to economic development was thoroughly confirmed. With respect to airline businesses, effective corporate management and public support packages were the main factors that helped them survive through the financial crash. The event triggered corporates to develop toward a more sustainable and resilient structure. Taking notice, the financial recovery of airlines has been constrained by the uncontrollable disease spread and the decrease of consumer demand resulting from the demand and supply market shock caused by the pandemic. Beyond, a longer time period is expected to facilitate a proper judgment on the actual impacts of the market event. With the narrow research scope on three European airlines, the author also highlighted the subjective limitations that occurred while proposing some recommendations for further studies