COVID-19 Lessons

Elim Hawkins

Friday, July 24, 2020 at 09:35 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

COVID-19 significantly disrupted aviation safety by reducing ATC staffing and services while simultaneously leading to an increase in less experienced or rusty pilots, creating operational imbalances.
The decline in ATC staffing resulted in increased individual controller workload, necessitating the curtailment of non-essential services and potentially causing delays.
Pilots exhibited a noticeable degradation in skills, including radio communication and airspace awareness, attributed to more experienced pilots being idled and general rustiness among active flyers.
Key safety issues like unauthorized Class D airspace entry and failure to read back critical ATC instructions (e.g., runway assignments) became more prevalent, requiring a conscious effort from both pilots and controllers to return to pre-pandemic safety standards.

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The first thing that happened was a sudden shift in “safety” concerns over to handling COVID- 19. Should I go fly? Wear a mask? But, where we began and where we’re headed now are two very different paradigms. The aviation safety culture we’ve built over decades is somewhat perishable—it’s not just like “riding a bike”—and it’s dynamic in that some things have to change and adapt to new realities for the overall safety focus to remain viable.

Initial Impact

Back in the January/February time frame, the NAS was hopping. Airlines to flight training were all moving with a purpose in an often near-full system. Then COVID-19 nearly shut it all down.