Not flying so high – A comparative analysis of airline lobbying during COVID-19

Considering the pandemic as a ‘shock’ or ‘focusing’ event (Kingdon, 1995; Birkland, 1998), this paper examines a key sector that was dramatically impacted during COVID-19: aviation. Lobbying by the aviation industry is significant because airlines and airports were so negatively impacted by unprecedented restrictive policies of governments worldwide, including border closures, mandatory quarantines, and travel bans (Chari and Rozas, 2022, 45, 49, 55). While aviation is usually vulnerable to factors outside of its control such as natural disasters, terror attacks, and oil embargos, COVID-19 resulted in an unprecedented downturn of the sector in terms of reduced capacity and weak demand (Sobieralski, 2020). Airline revenues plummeted (Suau-Sanchez, et al., 2020), with an estimated loss of USD370 billion in 2020 alone (Mazareanu, 2021). This paper comparatively analyses airline lobbying during COVID-19 in 5 key countries: the US, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and Belgium. These countries are chosen given the variation they provide in terms of the economic power of their aviation industries and their competitiveness. The paper uncovers and compares airline lobbying in each state in order understand the influence of airlines when key decisions were made. It does so by focussing on developments in 2 main policy areas. The first is state aid earmarked to the aviation industry. The second, health and safety policies around flying. The observational period for this paper includes the 18 months from March 2020 to August 2021. In order to ascertain the influence of airline lobbying in these policy areas, this paper builds on the extant process tracing literature. We argue that process tracing analysis helps us better understand the new and novel nature of policymaking during the pandemic, which oftentimes witnessed policy decisions driven by public health concerns rather than economic and business concerns. In countries where business interests are usually seen as some of the most powerful players in the policymaking process, their seat at the negotiating table may have been taken by those in the scientific community (Chari & Rozas, 2022, 80). Because pandemic decision-making may have championed the advice and guidance of public health officials over the preferences of economic interests, process tracing allows for greater exploratory analysis to uncover the nuances of the situation and the factors determining the influence of airline lobbying efforts. The type of process tracing analysis we employ has been utilised by interest group scholars in the past (e.g., Michalowitz, 2007; Dür, 2008; Rasmussen, 2015; Crepaz, 2020), but has yet to be used to assess developments in this key economic sector.