This study analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on Malaysia’s bilateral export in three categories of goods. The results show that higher numbers of COVID-19 cases among trading partners has led to higher levels of bilateral export for capital and consumption goods. Meanwhile, incremental increases in a trading partner’s policy stringency index has lowered the level of bilateral export for capital goods. These negative impacts highlight the need for support policies to ensure the survival of domestic producers during the current pandemic.

In 2019, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM) from tier one to tier two. Existing research has revealed that downgrading air safety ratings has a detrimental effect on the aviation sector. Although extensive research has been carried out on air safety downgrading, limited studies have delved into the backward and forward linkages and inter-industries framework. By employing a difference-in-differences (DID) panel data econometric and input-output (I-O) analysis to a modified sectoral aggregation of Malaysia’s I-O Table 2015, this study is able to simulate the impact of air safety downgrading. The findings show that, apart from being a “key” industry, air safety downgrades could result in a RM722.5 million loss to Malaysia’s GDP. A more in-depth inspection of the results indicates that the reduction in GDP mainly results from the air transport industry (RM252.0 million), other transportation services (RM107.0 million), and wholesale and retail trade (RM66.2 million). The findings complement earlier related studies that air safety rating downgrades could be a severe threat to sustainable economic growth.

The paper discusses previous studies on the effect of fatigue among flight crews and their effect on airline businesses. Fatigue is a major concern in flight operations as many reports were issued on this problem among flight crew. The long flight duration requires them to travel several time zones, which leads to fatigue. Furthermore, the change of time zones could also lead to the occurrence of jet lag and subsequently causes fatigue too. Fatigue can occur during and after the travelling period, and it takes a while to recover from it. This study aims to observe the effects of fatigue experienced by flight crew. The results show that fatigue causes many health problems such as an increase in cancer risk, depression, mental illness and miscarriage. Additionally, fatigue reduces one's work productivity as working in a tired state reduces work performance. Furthermore, fatigue also leads to other problems such as anger, anxiety, stress and job dissatisfaction. With the studies conducted on the issue of fatigue, airlines should take appropriate actions to minimise or solve the problem to ensure that fatigue problem will not affect flight crew performance and the airline business.

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