Covid-19 has brought huge disaster and loss to the world. During the outbreak, the U.S. airline industry has been hit hard. It suffered loss of profits and substantial layoffs caused by the reduction of customers and travel restrictions. This paper usestime series econometric models and datasets from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to study how Covid-19 impacts the profits and total employees in the U.S. airline industry.

This paper has found that the U.S. passenger airlines and cargo airlines have experienced different impacts on total employees and profits during the Covid-19 outbreak. Generally, due to the decrease of passengers during the epidemic period and the control of Covid-19 by the U.S. government, the total employees and profits of passenger airlines decreased significantly. In contrast, due to the increase in the transportation of anti-epidemic materials during the epidemic period, the total employees and profits of U.S. cargo airlines have increased significantly compared with non-epidemic periods.