Wichita State University administration and Student Health Services continue to closely
monitor the evolving COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak. The
health and safety of our students, faculty and staff is our highest priority.
Student Health Services (SHS) is in regular communication with the Sedgwick County
Health Department (SCHD) and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE).
As an industry, airlines are essential to our domestic and international way of life
in the United States. Our economy depends on the ability to move about the country
and the world freely, quickly and efficiently.
The COVID-19 virus outbreak has made us all rethink how and why we use this amazing
system of air travel, says Dean Headley, creator of the Airline Quality Rating and
professor emeritus at Wichita State University. This essential travel-only request
from our national and local officials is certainly a prudent part of the effort to
minimize the impact of the COVID-19 virus on the country. It comes with a myriad
of national, local and personal economic hardships.
When the survival of an essential industry is threatened for extraordinary reasons,
our government needs to consider if it should, and if so – how – to help that industry
continue to weather the storm. It has happened in the past in the railway industry
and, most recently, the banking industry.
Arguments can be made for helping or not helping airlines, but the overriding concern
should be what the consequence would be of not helping the airline industry? Headley
says we may not all agree with the need, type or amount of help, but we must all consider
what the world would be like if serious damage was done to the U.S. airlines’ ability
to move people and goods around the country and the world efficiently.
We are all experiencing some hardship in these extraordinary times. Hopefully it will
be short lived and of limited impact. This will pass and life can begin to return
to whatever our new normal may be, and this will certainly include travel by air,
Headley says.
Americans love to explore and wander the country and the world. Air travel may look
different in the post COVID-19 world, but we will certainly count on it being available
to us all.
