2020 has been perhaps one of the most challenging years for commercial aviation since the industry started. While the industry has survived terrorism, volcanic ash, wars and epidemics, this pandemic has shaken the industry to its core. The rulebooks have been thrown out and airlines have had to fight for their survival. While some governments have backed airlines with bailouts, others have had to fend for themselves. Thankfully it looks like 2020 is ending with a glimmer of hope – that 2021 will see vaccines, relaxation of borders and the return to skies for many carriers.
TheDesignAir Awards 2020
Naturally TheDesignAir covers the latest in innovations – and while there have been dozens, if not hundreds of temporary and short-term innovations to help the free movement of people and cargo (while doing everything airlines can to limit the spread of COVID) – we have decided that 2020 is not the year to award airlines for advancing their cabins or passenger experience product.
This year sees an unfair landscape of governmental support for airlines, and as such some airlines have managed to continue and will emerge unscathed, while other airlines will take years to recover from a year of disruption. As such we will postpone this years’ awards until 2021, and all the passenger product and brand innovations in 2020 will be included in our selection process for the 2021 awards. It’s been a difficult decision, but the hard work of the designers, agencies and airlines that have invested their products should be acknowledged, and its TheDesignAir’s commitment to do so.
A call for your continued support
As always we’ve been grateful for the following of this site. We couldn’t have continued without your regular engagement in our site, which has continued to report on the aviation sector for over 8 years. We’ve tried to keep the site advert free during the 8 years, and for just under 7 of them, we’ve kept the site clean of distracting advertising.
We made the decision to return to this advert-free design back in June, and since then, we’ve relied on donations from our readers of the site. If you find this site useful, a resource for either selecting your next carrier-of-choice or to the design agencies who use this site as a resource for their latest projects, please help us continue by making a donation.
We want to thank you for all of your continued help in keeping TheDesignAir alive, any donation, of any size, is appreciated. Let us also take this time to wish you all a festive end to your year, and please from all of us here, stay safe.
Jonny
TheDesignAir 