Originally Posted by
Fuel-Off
Just a little perspective from the outside. I haven't stopped working since the pandemic started (thankfully!) and it would seem that albeit light, passenger demand is still there, especially in Business and First as those who can afford it, wish to socially distance the best they can on aluminium tube.
Re video conferencing, I have quite a few friends in executive level management in companies completely away from aviation. They don't see this way of doing business practical particularly when you're doing multi million dollar deals, you need to see their poker face. And in Asia, face to face business dealings are VERY culturally important. It's a bit hard to do a deal when the kids come barging into the home office or the family cat walks over the keyboard. Just look at the news outlets and when they do interviews via zoom and the like. The interviewee is struggling to hear the questions being asked because the equipment they use is quite inferior to what a studio can provide (or the feed just cuts all together because the kids are using up all the bandwidth on youtube!)
The very same doomsday predictions were made during the 9/11 attacks, the first SARS outbreak and the GFC. Yet aviation prevailed.
Fuel-Off
My contention isn’t that post pandemic business travel will evaporate completely. I believe, based on conversations with friends outside aviation who work in the public and private sectors, is that in some organisations, one in every 2 or 3 business trips could be replaced by video conferencing. Perhaps a 10-20-30% reduction overall. Not a doomsday prediction, but not a snap back to pre pandemic levels of business travel either.