Originally Posted by
Pilot DAR
Yeah... I take:
The "Who" to be an airline, rather than a person. Let's discuss the airline industry in this thread please. ...
As the one that selected this title, I confirm that by "Who" I meant our industry , i.e. airlines , ATC service providers , maintenance, ops, airports aircraft manufacturers,, every entity that will be affected by this unprecedented crisis. Of course it implies directly people , us.. That is what I wanted to discuss here instead of medical /scientific data which we can all find everywhere else.
We hear right now a lot about the airlines , plans and Boeing going down, etc. but every other part or the system is or will be deeply affected .
ATC is really my area of expertise, and I've been there long enough to have seen a few of those crises , including the PATCO strike in 81, so here is my prediction for 6 months from now::
Running cargo ops which seems to be ( at least today , things change by the hour almost) where the traffic will be in the next few months . To maintain this a functioning ATC needs to be in place. Mots of the service providers are privatized or semi privatized , Without the pax revenue, and the traffic down 50 to 90 % , many ANSPS will not be able to maintain a full workforce on payroll. Some countries might ( or will) re-nationalize their ATC but probably then it will be re-sized to the actual demand. That fact , plus a few virus casualties will probably mean that more than half the current controllers might not be longer employed by the end of the year.
But the system will work for the current low demand over the next 6 months.
But after, in 6 months from now ? I will dare to say, based on previous experience, that over half of those send -off controllers will look for another occupation and will never come back . To recruit and train new ones is a matter of years not months.,. so even if we survive that crisis financially and let's say only 10 -20 % of us , people, will be disabled by the virus , our numbers actually valid on the job will be much lower, My point is that, even if the demand is back , the infrastructure might not be there any longer to sustain that and it will take years , it not decades, to rebuild the situation we have left a few months ago ..
Let's hope I am wrong ..