Originally Posted by
bean
CS It's not going to happen. The world has changed for good. Home working will continue even if the viris is eradicated and with the low levels of people currently testing positive for antinodies, it could continue for years.
BA will be looking to shed capacity not use it. Expect to see a much slimmer airline with consequent redundancies amongst staff and equipment. The world is already in DEEP recession
Another cheery post. Whilst some or all of this may be true I’m not sure I would agree that the world has changed for good thus meaning everything that we did know a couple months back will not now be required in the future.
From my perspective CS the answer is we don’t know. I do believe there will be a need for regional travel and connectivity but what that looks like, we will only know once markets and industries stabilise. Timescales will, in my view, depend largely on the antibody testing and vaccine availability as they are the only options currently on the table which would, again in my view, give customers confidence to go back to smaller confined spaces. The nonsense around keeping a middle seat free on aircraft doesn’t cut it.
Government response to any recession will be interesting too. They will want people to be spending in to the economy so staycations could very well work in Cornwalls favour for what is left of this summer and next. Fuel has typically been one of the larger costs to aviation but that’s at an all time low now, plus some restructuring to a market which could naturally thin out anyway (we don’t know which airlines will last the next 12 months).
From my perspective the question sits more around long haul. The likes of BA have a lot of aircraft with cabins which they may struggle to fill (First, Club) some of them with significant volumes of those premium seats which come at premium costs. Difficulties in selling those will push the cost of economy seats up. If the government still sees regional PSO routes a need, then BA may well benefit from operating those or expanding the CityFlyer portfolio to cover more regional flying.