Originally Posted by
ATNotts
I agree, routes that were profitable pre-covid ought, once the virus has run it course which Johnson reckons should be Spring next year, have a reasonable chance of making a come back. A lot will depend on which carriers are left by then, and how much they will pull back to their core, most profitable routes. And of course there's the other elephant in the room - Brexit. If there is no deal then business travel may take longer to recover, if if sterling took a hit as a result (of Brexit) foreign holidays could become rather more expensive at a time of what is likely to be (due to Covid) a period of high unemployment and continued recession.
Regional airports may take a long time to recover, perhaps 5 years. The commercial airline and travel industries have probably never experienced such uncertainty for decades, if ever at all.
Sadly, it will be a long road back to normality for regional airports given the fleet reductions many carriers have implemented or have still to implement. Regional routes, at the best of times, are pretty marginal so I expect to see consolidation on the larger >10m passenger a year airports and even some of those are facing hard times. You only have to look at Gatwick in that respect. Hopefully, I am wrong and only time will tell what the precise impact is on an airport like Newcastle.