An airline's route network is the foundation on which every carrier is built. But with the COVID pandemic having injected never-before-seen levels of volatility into the market, new routes and axed connections are closely watched, giving clues as to the health - and future plans - of operators globally. Network planners rely on vast data pools to determine where demand for new city pairs might lie. Online flight search websites enable planners to identify where people want to travel to and from before direct connections even exist, and trade and migration patterns are also pored over for clues as to which destinations will be most profitable. That entire process is largely a result of human analysis of data. Separate to the commercial decisions that must be taken about whether a route can be profitable is whether a route is operationally viable. Several criteria now become the determining factors, including weather, terrain, geo-political sensitivities, aircraft performance and limitations and airport suitability - such as slot availability, and the length of the runway. Then there are the non-normal situations, such as war or natural disasters, when airline operations departments are forced to tear up schedules and use resources in unplanned ways.
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