Evaluating resilience in commercial airlines through supply chain flexibility

The concept of organizational resilience continues to grow in focus and importance, but there
has yet to be an agreed upon measure of organizational resilience. Organizational resilience can be seen as a corporation’s ability to adapt to change and maintain flexibility within their supply chain. Resilience and flexibility at all organizational levels is necessary, in a proactive manner, to turn resilience into a competitive advantage. This study investigates the relationship between factors of supply chain flexibility that may explain the success of some airline companies throughout various shocks and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. The study focuses on the viability of the underlying supply chain models within major U.S. airline companies. Specifically, the study explores supply chain flexibility as a component of the Supply Chain Operations Reference metrics. Multiple regressions were performed and found the Supply Chain Flexibility Ratio being a predictive value of supply chain flexibility p<.05 and indicating supply chain flexibility which can be used as an indicator of organizational resilience in the airline mainline passenger industry.