The literature review attempted reports the impact of the pandemic on the economy and aviation sector from past pandemic epidemiology research on people attitude, mitigation policies, and post-pandemic recovery plans. The foundational understanding of past significant consequences from pandemic fallouts would be relevant for this research paper as it seeks to find similarities or differences in the outcomes. The literature could provide inspirations for the measurements and analysis to derive results from the quantitative research. Moreover, gaps or conflicts could be from the literature that would increase the research's weight in reporting the pandemic effects on the aviation sector, particularly for trade-dependent countries such as Singapore.
COVID-19 as a Pandemic
COVID-19 is proving to be a greatly destructive pandemic compared to previous global or regional pandemics recorded in history.(Qiu et al., 2018) describe on SARS 2003, which was another strain of corona virus though with limited impacts on a global scale. Despite this pandemic, limited mitigation measures were established on various sectors, including the aviation industry. COVID-19 cannot be compared to SARS 2003 in the same scale because the infection and death rate far superseded and prolonged for at least a year. This had hit Singapore's economy significantly as well. Hence, with such a more persistent pandemic that has infected and killed millions, it is critical to evaluate the severity of the pandemic's impact on the most susceptible sector of the economy, the airline industry.
In a comprehensive scoping review of 65 research articles by (Adhikari et al., 2020), coronavirus was identified as a disease within the virus category, which lead to several symptoms, including difficulty in breathing, fever, lung infection and pneumonia. As a reference, this literature confirmed that it was common globally in animals, and only a few cases have been pointed to affect human beings. In December 2019, it was reported that there was a coronavirus disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, which was linked to a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus2 referred to as SARS-CoV-2. The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the disease name as COVID-19 (Harapan et al., 2020). By the end of January 2020, WHO declared the diseases as a global pandemic.
This situation differed greatly from a similar pandemic that arose from China in 2003, known as SARS. Over the decade, the virus mutated. Nonetheless, comparing COVID-19 with SARS highlighted the immense scale of damage the current pandemic has. Wilder-Smith, Chiew, and (Lee et al., 2020) emphasized that it took a mere 8 months to contain SARS and was largely contained within Asian countries such as Hong Kong, whereas the COVID-19 infections rate far exceeded that of SARS with more than 82,000 cases within a matter of 2 months since the beginning of 2020.
Impact on Economy and Aviation Industry
In a recent assessment of COVID-19 impact on air transport, (Suau-Sanchez et al., 2020) established that the aviation industry was being affected much more than other industries due to the pandemic. The report indicated that 98% of worldwide passenger revenues as of End-March 2020 were lost. The global airline industry suffered a heavy shock as most countries went on lockdown and travel restrictions both domestically and internationally until July 2020.
Given the severity of COVID-19 to be much more potent than SARS 2003, a literature review of the economic impact from SARS would provide much foresight into similar or worse outcomes for COVID-19. In 2003 when there was SARS epidemic breakout, all economic contributors were affected. In the findings of a study by (Wilder-Smith, 2006), it is argued that the SARS significantly impacted travelling and tourism. Many governments were ill-prepared for the disease back then, and cosmopolitan cities such as Hong Kong were among the hardest hits.
(Suau-Sanchez et al., 2020) reported a similar comparison of COVID-19 and SARS with variations of impacts. This literature indicated similarities in impacts that include grounding aeroplanes, job losses, reduced profits, and operational losses. A close focus indicates that as of May 2003, SARS had affected Asia-Pacific monthly revenue passenger kilometres by 35% lower than the number before the crisis. In this study, COVID-19 is indicated to have affected up to 98% of the former operations.
A comparative analysis of COVID-19 with other pandemics and global crises such as climate change by (Gössling et al., 2020) indicated the trend of impact, as shown in the pandemic curve illustrated in Fig. 3.1. From this illustration, the literature study indicated the possibility of further impacts post-pandemic that could also be significant. This information would clarify the post-COVID nature of impacts that are likely to face the aviation industry. Tourism especially was vulnerable to COVID-19 due to social distancing, and aviation will almost cease, just like during the World War period. This comparison could be exaggerated and hence, justify the need to evaluate the pandemic's impact on the resumption of air travel in Singapore more accurately.
Mitigation Measures
When studying the pandemic of such levels, (Wilder-Smith, 2006) concluded that the investments should focus on infection control and screen capacities at the healthcare system entry points. The findings are also supported by (Anderson et al., 2020) that China's success case containing the virus despite being the earliest to be affected. China's strict and broad application of social distancing rules, isolation of infected people, and full lockdown of cities collectively helped to prevent uncontrollable transmission of COVID-19 amongst the populace. After the virus got contained, China was able to open almost all the domestic travel.
Singapore has employed similar tactics in theory to contain the virus. (Ng et al., 2020) with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States reported the list of swift and decisive actions that Singapore has utilised, which included surveillance, early detection and isolation with a reduction in the 7-day moving average from onset to isolation in hospital, air travel restrictions and public education in the bid to bring community cases down. However, the effects were dismal, especially for the virus's early onset as clusters were forming (Lee et al., 2020).
Noteworthy in comparison to China, Singapore's measures were similar in theory but less restrictive in their implementation. Moreover, in extension to (de Bruin et al., 2020) findings that other than just simply timely first response, having high citizenship awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of roles and responsibilities for social distancing measures were critical to the imposed measures' success. Could the attitudes towards the mitigation measures be different in China and Singapore? Could the people expect the different intensity of mitigation measures? These questions would have to be studied to understand the people's attitudes in Singapore towards COVID-19 and mitigation measures. Furthermore, these attitudes would impact the expectations of air travel (Gössling et al., 2020). Therefore, this study's research question matters, and the people's attitude matters as the efficiency and success of health policies depend on the people able to protect themselves, follow experts' advice, and obey rules (Lee et al., 2020).
Attitude during the pandemic
The importance of attitudes towards mitigating the pandemic is further supported by research by (Yap et al., 2010), who focused on understanding how best to manage influenza pandemic in Singapore through modifying behavioural changes following an outbreak in 2009. The study determined the variability in practices, attitudes and knowledge among various groups concerning the pandemic. It further recommended that the general public be educated to improve their practices of managing future pandemics. It also studied influenza perceptions in the context of healthcare workers and general personnel, distinguishing between airport staffers and non-aviation workers. However, this study's results were contradicted by another study by (Honarvar et al., 2020), who assessed the risk perceptions, attitudes, and practices of Iran adults towards the COVID-19 pandemic and surprisingly concluded that practices, perceptions and knowledge about COVID-19 amongst the Iranian adults are not related. Even if people were informed of the danger of sending sick patients to the hospital at the risk of infections, people still did so without many protective measures taken. The conflicting pieces of evidence justify an investigation into the context of Singapore's pandemic on how knowledge and attitudes could influence people's behaviours and especially air travel behaviours.
Post Pandemic Recovery
The literature has established shreds of evidence that there is an expected lasting impact on the economy and aviation sector. The severity of the impacts depends on the mitigation measures and receptivity towards these measures as well. More reviews of literature that studied post-pandemic periods found that countries who could return to normality or drivers of life pre-pandemic faster saw a corresponding faster rebound in tourist arrivals such as Hong Kong and United States (Mao et al., 2010). A deeper study into China’s domestic airline demand and industry for COVID-19 suggested similar predictions found that airlines in open economies would be severely disrupted from normality and would likely require capital injection such as bailouts to survive (Czerny et al. 2020).
(Mao et al., 2010). applied the cusp catastrophe model as a theoretical foundation to learn about the mechanics of post-pandemic recovery in tourism in Japan, Hong Kong and the United States. The results highlighted that the cusp catastrophe model explained that fear and perceived risk about the pandemic mitigation measures would slow down the recovery pace, whereas more confident populations recover faster.
The literature provided extensive foundational theories and methodologies that are significantly relevant to this paper’s objectives. Starting from the cusp catastrophe model, the prospects of returning to normality in the context of pandemics, as researched by (Mao et al., 2010) can be influenced by the attitudes towards the pandemic and mitigation measures. Concurrently, the mitigation measures' effectiveness depends on the attitudes towards these measures as explored by (Yap et al., 2010). Referencing to this model is relevant to pandemic studies and also the quantitative questionnaire methodology by (Yap et al., 2010) on Singapore's SARS period, the current study investigates the context of the COVID-19 on the aviation sector to answer the research question of how attitudes and mitigation measures could influence expected air travel.
Problem Statement
The study's background illustrates a direct connection between the COVID-19 cases and the effect on flight frequency, which translates to the effect on the performance of the industry during the pandemic. Since the first case was reported, there has been no guarantee on the complete ending of this pandemic and so the possibility of resultant effects continuing on the aviation industry. Considering that the aviation industry depends on global performance, it is thus influenced greatly by global changes, market dynamics and shifts across the world, which continue affecting the industry. Singapore's aviation industry is not isolated, which attracts the interest of understanding the possible impact of the pandemic. Further, it raises concerns about the industry's performance after the pandemic through the response actions undertaken within the industry.
Despite this worrying trend on the global and national (Singapore) aviation industry, there has been no research focused on understanding the Singapore aviation industry, their responses and preparedness and the impact of COVID-19 during and post-pandemic. Being the main airport in Singapore and an international airport hub, Changi airport could help understand the Singapore aviation industry with the pandemic's influence. The results could potentially serve to improve the preparedness and decisive actions to be taken to protect the aviation sector should another pandemic happens in the future.