Originally Posted by
PilotLZ
Further to the topic of uneven recovery - it will also be very uneven by sectors, not only by parts of the world. Those who are most impatient to go globe-trotting once again are leisure travellers, those visiting friends and family, students, volunteers and all other people to whom flying is associated with fun and not with drudgery. They've been in forced confinement and away from loved ones for quite a while now and will jet off the moment they are allowed to. Unfortunately, most of those people have relatively limited budgets and the money usually comes out of their own pockets. So, this has implications on the airlines which will recover first and where you as a pilot are most likely to either be recalled from furlough or get a new job. Those are LCCs, leisure and charter. Right after them comes legacy regional and short-haul. Long-haul will be in the doldrums for the longest.
I think a fundamental reality check is in order here.
A lot of us haven't been able to see our relatives where no flying is needed - simply because they live in other households beyond the limits to which we are restricted by lockdown.
Within that context - if the public are faced with a choice - new domestic lockdown as a consequence of inbound travellers delivering a new strain or mutation - or severe international travel limitations - which do you think they will choose? Personal freedoms within your national boundary and restrictions on travel across that boundary - or personal restrictions within your national boundary with miimal or no restrictions of travel across thet boundary?
Vaccination is not a 100% solution - though the adverts of the travel companies would suggest they would like to think otherwise.
One of the big differences between the way the pandemic has been handled is the number of inbound travellers and the control of them. The UK got just about every strain of Covid-19 under the sun - the reason for that was the level of international travel.
It has taken almost a year for the UK government to wake up to this.
It would have been better to have put controls in properly last spring once the seriousness of the situation became apparent. Now almost a year later we finally have organised quarantine.So they vaccinate the majoroity of vulnerable peopel and age groups by May. If they open the borders they are simply asking for successive new waves - not as bad as we have seen - but causing fatallities nonetheless - and in a worst case you get a new strain that undermines the vaccinations.
So the strategic choice is simple. Restrict international travel for the forseeable future and ensure personal liberty and safety and education and the mainstream economy within our borders. Or derestrict internatonal travel and risk throwing the economic sacrifice and vaccoination effort away - and incur extra deaths and have the population put under renewed restraint.
Explain that to people properly and I think we know what they will choose.