Originally Posted by
Colonel_Klink
And as the poster above said, QF aren’t far from doing a similar thing. To be honest, I’m glad VA got in first with this - I would hate to know how much money is being spent flying around empty planes.
QF basically have already.
Loads are low on all airlines but there are goods and people that still need to be moved intercity by air quickly, they can’t wait for the long times that road transport takes in Australia. Freight, mail, organ transplants, compassionate travel, transfer of key critical health, emergency and government personnel. A lot of trade is now being done online and by order instead of in stores, lots of that goes by air and the current freight only fleet isn’t big enough to carry it all, there’ll need to keep some pax aircraft airborne transporting a lot of that freight so they might as well sell some tickets. There is only a skeleton network operating, but the government will need to subsidise that bare skeleton network for critical issues. It actually wouldn’t cost too much for a few months as it’d be no more than a one or a few flights per day between cities.
The airlines will also need to keep some pilots current or when the lockdowns are lifted and 5 million Australians want to travel and visit their family and friends all over the country again (in China as soon as the lockdowns were lifted people flocked everywhere) and get the economy back on track there won’t be enough current pilots to fly them all suddenly.