Transportation engineering graduate student Gabriel Cedraz Diniz was recognized by the Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues for the academic year 2024-25. Sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation and administered by the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) of the Transportation Research Board/National Academies, this award is presented for successful completion during the upcoming academic year of Diniz’s research paper entitled “From Disruptions to Recovery: The U.S. Airline Industry Landscape in 2024.” For this honor, Katz will receive a research stipend in the amount of $12,000. Winners also receive the opportunity to present their work at TRB’s annual meeting, to be held in Washington, D.C., in January 2025; and the possibility to have their final research paper published in TRB’s journal, Transportation Research Record. Awardees are also assigned a panel of experts to advise them throughout their research.
According to Cedraz Diniz, while several papers have examined the impact of flight operations during the pandemic, little research has been done examining how air service has changed since the industry has returned to pre-pandemic travel levels. “Multiple factors have contributed to a structural shift in the industry including pilot and air traffic control shortages, aircraft delivery delays, and inflationary cost pressures,” he states. “This study will provide an in-depth and airport-specific assessment of how scheduled air service, passengers’ volumes, and airfares have changed for U.S. airports during its recovering phase and show how air service today is different than in 2019 and will quantify how service reductions have disproportionately impacted smaller communities.”
In addition to the paper, the project will include an on-line tool that airports can use to benchmark how their service levels have changed relative to peer airports and policymakers can use for data-based decisions. Cedraz Diniz is grateful to aviation analytics company Cirium for providing access to Cirium DiioTM that will be used as the primary source of data for the study.
“I’m delighted that Gabriel has been selected for this award,” says faculty mentor Laurie Garrow. “Having advised other students in this program in the past, I know that our students have benefited tremendously from the mentoring and feedback that the expert panel provides as the students engage on the research and prepare a paper.”
Gabriel completed his MS in Business Economics at Fundação Getulio Vargas and his BSCE at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Previous to GT, he worked for four years as a Supply Chain Consultant for Accenture and Ernst & Young.