The impact of COVID-19 on airline passenger travel behavior: An exploratory analysis on the Chinese aviation market

China was the first airline market in the world to be hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been gradually recovering as the pandemic is largely contained domestically. However, with the global pandemic spread and great uncertainty, there has been a remarkable change in airline passengers’ travel behavior. This paper collected air passenger-level data from TravelSky in the Chinese market. In addition to the analyses on aggregate passenger flow patterns, this paper explores changes in airline passenger travel behavior, such as ticket booking time, age distribution of passengers, refunds and ticket changes, and passenger arrival time at airports. This is one of the first studies to focus on micro-level changes in airline passenger travel behavior by using objective passenger-level data. The pandemic-induced psychological changes in air travelers are explored, providing useful managerial and policymaking implications for the normalization of the pandemic and the recovery of the airline market in the post-pandemic era.