All of us who follow the events in the world of aviation are surprised by its current state. The vast majority of aircraft are grounded, flying just enough to maintain basic connections between countries so that those who have to can travel or to transport cargo. Tourism has stopped and is just shyly starting to come back, but if we look at our tourism, it mostly comes down to guests from neighboring countries arriving by car. The borders are just beginning to open. Photos from the airports show how eerily the terminals are empty.
The famous term “new normal” has appeared, with which we want to be told that the current way of traveling by plane will no longer be the same. Traveling with a mask on your face has become a normal thing, you can only take the mask off when serving a meal, but of course, it is only on long flights. On shorter flights there is either no passenger service or it is limited to water. Hand disinfection is becoming mandatory, so many airlines have started giving wipes with disinfectant so passengers can disinfect their hands. Even the airline can deny you boarding the plane if you do not have a mask, while the masks should be changed every 4 hours. If you are traveling somewhere to a distant destination you would need to carry a box of masks with you so you can change them properly.
Everywhere there is a trumpet about distance between people, when you stand somewhere in line, keep a distance, when you are in a cafe or restaurant keep a distance, when you are anywhere you would have to follow the rules of distance of at least 2 meters, and we all know how especially with low cost airlines until a few months ago, the rule was to “squeeze as close as possible.” But reconfiguring aircraft cabins to increase the distance between passengers is not possible in a short period of time, also low-cost carriers live by cramming as many people into the aircraft as possible, if they have to reduce aircraft capacity by a certain percentage, it may mean the end of their way of doing business.
When the traffic starts one day, it will be interesting to see the movement of air ticket prices. If we continue to see tickets at ridiculous prices, then we will continue to travel around Europe for the price of one pizza in a restaurant. Will the prices for intercontinental flights still be relatively cheap or will they rise to those levels from ten years ago, when it was not very common to come across a ticket every day, for example to China for some 400 EUR or to North America for 300 EUR.
Although the first forecasts were that everything would return to more or less normal by the summer, air traffic is still moving in a snail’s pace towards recovery. Many carriers tried to establish traffic during May, but the flight start date is constantly being extended. Domestic transport is slowly being established in many countries, but international, and especially intercontinental, is being delayed day by day.
Many carriers are reducing fleets, retiring some old types of aircraft or even relatively new ones like the Airbus A380. Airline layoffs have become commonplace, and every now and then one can hear someone laying off 200/500/1000 or as many employees as possible. We can also hear airlines cutting employees ’salaries.
So far, the mass bankruptcies of airlines have not started, states are trying to help their national airlines by pumping huge amounts of money just to keep them alive. But how long carriers will be able to survive is a big question.
When the number of passengers will return to the previous state is also a big question that arises, whether it will take several months, years or 5 years, it is difficult to predict.
In short, at the moment, air transport is in a strange state, waiting and following the development of the situation and trying to adapt to the situation, and the situation, at least for now, does not look too fairytale. Now we can use the saying “whoever survives will talk”.
