The Future of Work in Airlines

Airlines and their partners will need to determine how they can collectively adapt to the “next normal” of passenger and employee expectations in a post-COVID world.

Executive summary

While demand slowly returns, airlines need to contend with potentially significant downsizing and handling excess capacity as 2019-level load factors aren’t expected to return for another couple of years. With increased attention on health and safety, shift in consumer expectations, and change in regulations amidst a challenging economy, airlines will need to rethink business strategies from ground up to thrive in the future.

As airlines prepare to transition to recovery, they can leverage the crisis to purposefully challenge longstanding orthodoxies and embrace certain key imperatives to guide their efforts—all in coordination with their ecosystem partners. The report dives into these imperatives for airlines to recover from the pandemic and thrive in the “new normal”.

• Broaden the culture of health & safety
• Quickly ramp-up to productivity while building organizational agility
• Identify capabilities to retire, accelerate, enhance, or outsource
• Rethink workplace strategy
• Invest in cognitive automation & digital enablement

It also provides considerations for airlines’ businesses across work, workforce, and workplace; and looks at different approaches and tactics across core their functions.

Considering the disruptive nature of the imperatives for recovery and resiliency, opportunities for automation, enabling technology to facilitate remote work, and the ability to access talent in new ways, airlines can also seek to reimagine several core roles.