Passengers’ Emotional Response and Airline Selection Attributes before and during COVID-19

With the global spread of COVID-19, the aviation industry has faced unprecedented shocks and crises. This study compares airline selection attributes before and during COVID-19. Through online reviews of passengers written, this study compares and analyzes passengers’ emotional responses and airline selection attributes in the aviation industry. This study obtains some meaningful results by text mining 30,226 online reviews written by passengers on TripAdvisor. This study utilizes Word2Vec model to conduct a similarity calculation process. The results show that COVID-19, which in the daily lives of the populace appeared as an emotional response such as fear, anger, and sadness, affects the use of airlines. During COVID-19, passengers’ emotional responses in limited spaces such as airports and cabins increased their negative emotions by 21.4%p compared to pre-pandemic. It has been confirmed through online texts written by passengers that their negative emotions due to COVID-19 increased. This study finds a new dimension, crisis coping that passengers consider when using airlines in crisis situations such as COVID-19. It is confirmed that in a crisis caused by infectious diseases passengers’ interests on air travel decreased, and interest in airline response systems such as quarantine guidelines, reservation changes, and refunds implemented by airlines in a crisis caused by infectious diseases increased.