I think the major issue might be that I don't see any way to make money on long haul without the mask mandate being removed. If we're looking at April-2022 and summer plans mean you have to mask up for long haul, that straight away skews a lot of people from long haul travel. Discretionary, last minute fun traveling doesn't work on a model of ongoing testing and traveling in such an environment. A lot of people who would otherwise spend thousands of pounds with your airline may well spend on a short haul carrier where the hassle is a lot less. So long haul high volume leisure won't bounce back until we normalise as a society. We're all at different stages here, the UK is emerging from the other side, Australia and NZ and in a really bad place where locking down means the plaster is still being pulled of as very few people have had COVID and immunity is almost non existent as a result. Here in the UK, we had a torrid time of vulnerable people dying but at the same time loads of us have been exposed and have a real immunity as well as a proper vaccination program where all the vulnerable who need one or can have one have been jabbed.
If you remember back in 2020, they were saying it would be 2023 before traffic bounced back, I suspect 2022 will be masked up and a realisation you can't make any money in that envirnoment and so as we slowly normalise then pressure should build to remove the mandate.