The aviation industry has been through a lot.
In 2020 travelers rushed to book flights on commercial airliners while the wealthy splashed out on private jets just to get home as the world shut down.
After March 2020, the global public was largely wary of flying and there were no places to go. Less than half a million travelers left US airports daily from March 21, 2020 to June 10, 2020, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
Travelers began flying again in earnest in the last few months of 2020. The number of travelers using US airports has gone up in recent years, and some airlines are once again recording profits.
Aviation played a vital role in helping to mitigate the effects of some of the year's worst catastrophes as well as in reestablishing a fractured world.
Aviation helped save the world.
Supporting the vaccine airlift.
The vaccine is being transported by Singapore Airlines.
The Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information.
The global distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine was one of the most important feats of aviation in the year.
In 2020 the first flights began and were mostly secret. The first dose of the Pfizer vaccine was brought to the US in November of 2020 by a United Airlines plane.
The vaccines were transported by cargo carriers in the US. Without air cargo, the US wouldn't have been able to get the vaccine to more than half of the population in time.
Since November of 2020, the airfreight division of Middle Eastern mega carrier Emirates has flown more than 500 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. In October and November, 200 million of those doses were flown.
"It's really getting into a supply chain flow, which we see with regular shipments," said the manager of the special cargo service delivery. The importance of the vaccines is not over yet.
The US State Department is facilitating the donation of 1.2 billion doses of COVID-19 to countries around the world, an endeavor also made possible by air cargo.
Helping Haiti recover from an earthquake.
A helicopter brings food to Haiti after an earthquake.
Richard Pierrin.
The Caribbean nation of Haiti was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August. The US government and private air carriers provided assistance to Haiti.
According to the US Agency for International Development, the US military provided 19 helicopters and eight transport aircraft that helped 477 people and transported 587,950 pounds of supplies.
US Customs and Border Protection sent aircraft and personnel to Haiti to help with recovery efforts. Communications for other aircraft conducting rescue and relief missions were helped by the P3 aircraft.
National Air Cargo arranged humanitarian supply flights, while the airline sent a plane from Florida with first responders and relief supplies to the country, according to CBS Miami.
A Christian organization that helps in humanitarian efforts used its aircraft to deliver supplies to Haiti. The Herald-Tribune reported that one of its pilots flew around six people to the capital city of Port-au-Prince after being approached by wounded Haitians.
The shipping crisis is being flown over.
Sean Gallup is a photographer.
Hundreds of container ships are spending weeks outside of ports from Los Angeles to Georgia as air cargo has shifted from being a luxury to a necessity. Shippers are adapting to the new reality of getting goods to market by using a more expensive option than ocean shipping.
The amount of time people are wasting and people missing deadlines is more expensive than chartering a plane, according to a partner owner of PortX Logistics.
The passenger and freight airlines are both looking to grow their operations with new aircraft. Billions of dollars worth of new cargo planes have been committed by Air France, Singapore Airlines, and other airlines between November and December.
The chairman of National Air Cargo told Insider that people got used to the new world of supply chain. People get used to moving quicker and so people are demanding freight to come at a faster clip.
Air cargo might experience the same issue as port congestion grows. According to the Wall Street Journal, air cargo is not immune to the labor shortage or the truck driver shortage.
Thousands of refugees were evacuated from Afghanistan.
People being evacuated from Afghanistan onto a U.S. Air Force plane are being loaded by loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron.
Donald R. Allen is a master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force.
The final days of the War in Afghanistan relied on the aviation industry to evacuate Afghan refugees and any remaining Americans in the country that wanted to leave as the Taliban took over.
For the first time in a decade, the US government asked US-flagged airlines to help evacuate Afghan refugees. A total of 18 aircraft from long-haul airlines, including American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Atlas Air, Omni Air, and Hawaiian Airlines, flew to military bases in Europe and the Middle East to fly thousands of refugees to the US for resettling.
US carriers flew into Afghanistan to rescue refugees. National Air Cargo says it was the last US carrier in Afghanistan before the US military left. Rescue missions were flown directly out of Kabul using Global Crossing's fleet of A320 family aircraft.
Turkish Airlines and Pakistan International Airlines were able to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan despite the fact that the Hamid Karzai International Airport is not safe. Helicopters were used to help evacuate the US Embassy in Afghanistan.
The US Air Mobility Command said that a US Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III set a record for the most Afghan citizens transported from Kabul.
The end of the war in Afghanistan was marked by the departure of the last US military aircraft on August 31.
Learning from Hurricane Ida.
President Joe Biden is in Louisiana to survey the damage from Hurricane Ida.
Jonathan Ernst/POOL/
The US was dealing with a Hurricane that hit the Southeast and East Coast while the Afghanistan airlift was going on. At least 12 states were devastated by Hurricane Ida.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration helped track and study Hurricane Ida. While most aircraft were avoiding the storm, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Gulfstream IV-SP and the Lockheed WP3D Orions flew a total of nine missions in and above the storm to gather data.
"These missions gathered critical data for both forecasting the storm's track and intensity as well as conducting research to improve our understanding of how and why hurricanes rapidly intensify," the statement said.
After the storm had passed, an aircraft from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration was used to survey and photograph the damage in an effort to assist federal, state, and local agencies with recovery efforts.
Flying Mag reported that independent organizations used donated aircraft to aid in the recovery.
Reuniting countries with the US.
The US borders will reopen on November 8, 2021.
OLIVIER DOULIERY is with Agence France-Presse.
Travelers from Europe, South Africa, and Brazil were largely barred from entering the US in the year 2021, under travel restrictions imposed by the Trump administration and renewed by the Biden administration. The US was closed off while other countries opened their doors to American citizens.
The reopening date is November 8. Foreign travelers rushed to purchase airline tickets in order to get back to their families in the US.
After nearly two years of separation, Americans were once again able to host foreign visitors at the airport. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways took a joint takeoff from London's Heathrow Airport to New York.
The UK-US reopening of the trans-Atlantic corridor was celebrated by British Airways' chief executive officer on the day. "Bringing families, friends, and businesses back together is part of closing this chapter and celebrating what's to come."
