Exogenous shocks on the air transport business. The effects of a global emergency

The COVID-19 public health crisis is the major social and economic shock at the global level after the Second World War. Its impact on the ways we currently live, work, do business, and trade will be enormous but still difficult to evaluate. The whole mobility current patterns and tools are rapidly changing, so we have to start re-thinking the “new normal” and how we get there. In the air sector, the massive reduction of transport demand has shown that innovative business models are needed for airlines and airport management. This chapter will outline the impacts of the international air market's emergency crisis, exploring both the passenger demand and the supply side. A focus on the market supply revision policies will be put, highlighting the new mission of the nationalized airlines together with the State presence and its novel role of entrepreneur. Finally, special attention will be paid to airlines' recurring actions to face the economic crisis. According to that, core measures dealing with fleet optimization, resizing airline capacity, alliances-based synergies, and postponement of new aircraft orders will be discussed, thus investigating the business models' stability of both the incumbents and low-cost air carriers.