Originally Posted by
lilpilot
There is a trust breakdown as well. Airlines and airports were all about safetysafetymoresafety and now they spectacularly failed to mitigate the biggest safety matter of the day, this may add to the perceived threat. Travelers are possibly consciously or unconsciously holding airlines responsible for their contribution to the pandemic.
Let's not lay all the blame on the airlines. They,
just like almost everyone else, were taken by surprise on this. And they were probably helping to spread this 'thing' a lot earlier than almost anyone thought. I have used the word 'almost' twice. This came from somewhere and someone was not being open and honest about the problem at source. You
cannot blame the airlines for that.
IATA and WHO have both used EASA information to show that the air purity inside a modern airliner is similar to that in an operating theatre.Masks can be of use to stop someone unwittingly (or otherwise?) being on board with this 'thing' from spreading it to anyone in their immediate vicinity. (I have flown as pax on a full airliner with everyone wearing masks most of the time, showing that it can be done.) Maybe this is a way of increasing passenger confidence? However, even though air travel is demonstrably by far the safest form of travel, you still have those with an irrational fear of it. This, even though it may be shown to be as safe, will have those with yet another layer of irrational fear to add to the problems of confidence. Some form of 'health passport' may help alleviate this?
PilotLZ is perfectly correct. Humans need interaction. And travel is important to that interaction. The world needs travel. Economies need travel. It needs to get going again as fast as possible.
(Future travel should possibly restrict travel from areas that are not as open and honest about health problems.)
To sum up, the risk of contracting virus on aeroplanes is much, much lower than in all sorts of other activities that people seem quite happy to want to take part in.