Looks like Lufthansa are taking their first bite at the post-Coronavirus bullet

https://travelweekly.co.uk/articles/...s-crisis-fleet

Seems like a logical approach to reduce costs. I wonder if others will take a similar decision soon or wait a while longer and see how things play out?

Friend working Gatwick yesterday................. indicated they expected 2.5 Million people over Easter Period, reality is they will be lucky with 200, Belavia flying to Minsk, Ryanair flying to Ireland but the Ryanair arrivals has 20 people on the plane.

Simon Calder on 5 Live saying he expects travel within the UK to start mid-May and gradual travel abroad from the end of May, improving in June. His caveat that he is being optimistic and could be wrong.

I strongly echo the caveat!

Air travel within the UK has not completely stopped - you can still fly today between LHR and MAN, EDI, GLA, ABZ, IOM and BHD.

Scaremongery.

It’s entirely feasible that the UK will be moving again by early May and that there will be movement again in to most parts of Europe at least by June. That very much sits with what all the expert economists are saying.

The problem is that most economists (and I trained as one many years ago !) know very little about medicine or public health - I would not trust anything an economist says about things where the medical profesion are (almost) the sole experts
You can talk about rational agents until the cows come home.... but some things outweigh economic preferences !

108 new cases in China in the last 24 hours with most of them imported yet China now has some of the most restrictive foreign travel restrictions in the world.

Would someone like to tell me how the UK will not follow the same pattern if domestic restrictions are lifted in June?

I would think that despite the UK being very relaxed in letting in the virus with no restrictions or quarantine requirements that could change if we get a substantial drop in our own cases. Also there will be far more cases around the world of this virus in May and June than there is now.

I think that we should all assume the worst, then we can't get disappointed.
One flight pet day between EDI and LHR hardly cpunts as a service. I would expect domestic to be allowed to restart within the foreseeable future, but overseas much later. After all it's being suggested that us oldies will have to stay in lockdown until there's a vaccine.

The market for travel is built on the need or desire to physically meet people - vfr traffic and business meetings. Both of these things are effectively off limits. Then there is tourism but with almost all hotels shut, where would folks stay?
When restrictions on the drivers and enablers of travel start to be lifted there will be more flying. The immediate question for airlines starting passenger flying programs again is 'where will they be allowed to fly to?'. Who would want a plane-load of Brits or Belgians or Germans etc etc?
This crisis will create a deep seated xenophobia in places that we used to travel to with ease; as well as our own home-grown version (frankly who would welcome a coach load of chinese tourists turning up at their venue right now or even in the medium-term given that they started the whole thing). That will take some time to dissipate. Brits literally may not be allowed in to some countries for months to come or longer. It will be a long slog back to what was there before (3-5 years imo). Even when a vaccine is readily available, many countries may insist on a certificate of proof prior to entry. The barriers to travel are not coming down any time soon even if the desire returns.

I don't think I'll be back in my office by early May, much less thinking about travelling for business or any other reason. France has just extended their lockdown to 11 May, so travel to most parts of Europe by June looks optimistic

There is a huge elephant in the room. So bad has been our Government’s preparation and response to the virus, with so little testing, that while parts of Europe may well be open by June we may find that as Brits we are ourselves subject to entry restrictions and thus cannot go.

Don’t think many governments have come out of this looking good. The EU has been a total shambles with each country doing their own thing with zero unity between the 27. The four nations of the UK have acted as one but like most countries have been slow to respond.

As for air travel I hope other nations do put restrictions on the UK as it helps to keep us from importing other cases.

There seem to me only three ways this crisis will end.
1. Some drug treatment is discovered which blocks the immune overreaction which is killing people by damaging their lungs. I see no sign of this although there are clinical trials.
2. After the current lockdown succeeds in reducing the numbers to a manageable level, the disease is allowed to work its way through the population until herd immunity is established. The studies on a few severely affected communities suggest that the first wave reached ca 15%, so it will take many months for this to happen. Most lockdown rules would have to continue all this time. (In Hokkaido, which had an early outbreak, they've just had to reimpose restrictions after a second wave began.)
3. A successful vaccine is created and is manufactured at scale. Not before this winter.

I see no way that significant international flights will restart this summer.

Article from Travel Weekly this morning would support that EU have similar thoughts...

https://www.travelweekly.co.uk/artic...s-ec-president

Totally understandable but not the sort of news those hoping for a swift return for aviation would wish to hear.
The global picture may be different of course with the Americans sounding rather gung-ho overnight but I would imagine a common sense approach with a gradual relaxation of the rules when the time is right is what will be seen. The unanswered question is when “when” will be but it will evidently vary from country to country.

I think we can all be certain that restrictions will be lifted way to early so to save the economy. Pubs, restaurants and mass gatherings will be the last to be lifted and probably not until the autumn. Those taking self isolation seriously will just carry on regardless as there will still be many new cases reported daily as those coming out of isolation get infected. Air travel will be decimated well into next year.

There are some looking particularly bad, and they have politics in common...Trump, Johnson, Erdogan, Bolsonaro.

Funny you say the nations of the EU have been doing their own thing...I was told Brussels has all the power and leaving the EU would enable us to control our own borders?

There are also a number of countries that have done particularly well

AirportPlanner1
I would be interested to hear which countries you think are handling CVD19 well and why?

27 voices, 27 different policies and zero coordination in a crisis. Politicians at each other’s throats where they can’t even agree a financial response that has any meaning.

Worth a read for those that think the EU can do nothing wrong https://euobserver.com/coronavirus/148039

Each European country will have there own policy on opening up borders. Flight from Romania to Luton are expected to resume on the 19th

New Zealand - early lockdown, early checking & quarantine of arrivals, open/transparent leadership/decision making

Singapore, S Korea - Thorough testing etc, kept what could be huge infections and death tolls under control

Austria - Quickly and firmly took action, now reaping rewards as early to start resuming parts of normal life

Germany - No better/worse than most other European countries but starting point of excellent critical care capacity which helps explain low death rate

Italy has announced increased restrictions to its borders today while starting to relax a few restrictions to those living in Italy. I would hope we would follow with our own border restrictions. What is the point of having our own social isolation when we just let anyone in from anywhere in the world with no quarantine, no checks and no questions.

Even when flights resume, if social-distancing is still be practiced (which is highly likely), the practicalities of handling passengers will be immensely difficult. Two metres separation between people at bag drops/check-in, security and the gate will make scheduling of flights radically different from what we are used to. Boarding the aircraft even with a significantly lower number of passengers to maintain social separation will need to be well-controlled, needing extra staff and time.

The capacity of all flights will also need to be drastically reduced. For example on a typical A320/737 only seats A and F could be used to ensure some distance is maintained from cabin crew, and only every third or fourth row at that, reducing the capacity on each flight to around 30 or so passengers. It would also not be possible to provide any inflight sales, so the pricing structure of flights will need to reflect this - I think we could easily be looking at fares pro-rata similar to business class in the 1980s, with typical 1.5 to 2 hour European sectors needing to be around £500.00 GBp each way.

If you want to see a lack of social distancing come to Luton Airport's arrivals and watch the handful of flights being met by friends and family. There is absolutely no social distancing but a lot of kissing and cuddling.

This type of cynicism is most unhelpful in the context of a very challenging national debate. COVID-19 was a brand-new virus when it emerged in December. No medical expert - let alone any politician - knew how it would play out ahead of time. For this, politicians in the UK have turned to advice from the medical and scientific community. There has been cross-party support for this approach, and rightly so. The party leaders in the UK are not medical doctors. Their job is to take on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser and implement it on a best endeavour basis. Dealing with the virus is a steep learning curve for everyone, and it is easy for 'gotcha' journalists and keyboard warriors to criticise. But would they do any better? Having unlimited PPE, unlimited ventilators, unlimited reliable testing kits and a viable vaccine from day one would be lovely. Well, there is no magic wand for that. Everybody is doing the best they can. Party-political affiliations are not the problem. Production capacity is.

Timing the relaxation of lockdown restrictions will be a matter of delicate judgment. The economy is a valid consideration (the death rate rises in recessions), but not the only one. There is a good reason why 'solitary confinement' is considered a punishment in the penal system. It adversely impacts mental wellbeing. When assessing the C-19 measures, the benefits of restricting transmission of the virus on the one hand must be weighed against competing medical implications on the other. Depression, suicidal tendencies, anxiety attacks, loneliness, alcoholism, substance abuse, self-harm, problem gambling, domestic violence, stress, physical inactivity, comfort eating, backlogging of deferred elective surgeries, missed cancer check-ups. The extended lockdown costs lives too. Many shades of grey must be considered in timing the easing of restrictions. Remember too that a very high percentage of C-19 deaths befall people with remaining life expectancy of less than three months due to existing conditions. C-19 can administer the 'final push' to those already in palliative care. Every life is precious, but that must include those resulting from the unintended consequences of longterm lockdown too. The medical profession has a very difficult call to make on this one, and the politicians would be foolish to second-guess their advice. They know that armchair critics will rile against them whatever they decide (as if they know better). We should offer our support to those making the tough calls and avoid the temptation to join the baying mob. Criticising with the benefit of hindsight is so easy.

PPRuNe purports to be a forum for professionals. So surely we can rise above nonsense like this? Those four names represent national leaders who have little in common politically. To lump them together with some absurd innuendo doesn't inform us about their respective strategies to deal with C-19. It just makes you come across as rather silly. Please show us you can be better than that.

I'm sure most here wish to see the airline industry return to normality ASAP. But that's going to be a long-haul (pardon the pun). Let's try to stay objective and plan for the future rationally. The virus is nobody's fault. It's one of those things, like an earthquake, a tornado, or a volcanic eruption. Sometimes bad stuff happens. The sooner we quit playing the blame-game and look to rebuilding the industry with positive intent, the sooner we will emerge from this mess.

That wasn't cynicism but more of what is going to happen. If there is no cure apart from isolation then we should be locked down until there are zero cases. That could take a year or more and then we would still import cases with our lax borders. At some point the economy will be restarted because it has to and we will be hit with a second and third wave. By that point the people will start to accept that deaths will have to happen and that the strongest will survive.

[QUOTE=OzzyOzBorn;10749989 No medical expert - let alone any politician - knew how it would play out ahead of time. For this, politicians in the UK have turned to advice from the medical and scientific community.[/QUOTE]

If what we are led to believe is true, they did know about this outbreak in China and Medical officers who were working on it were hushed up and then mislead the WHO and many others. How much of this could have been prevented. Who knows ? The whole world is in a mess now virally and financially, we will have to bide our time and hope we come through it. I would rather stay in lockdown and stay safe for as long as it takes, lets face it the other option is less favourable, who wants to die.
STAY home and be SAFE

If what we are led to believe is true, they did know about this outbreak in China and Medical officers who were working on it were hushed up and then mislead the WHO and many others. How much of this could have been prevented.

1. Who has the most to gain?
2. Can you really trust the Chinese figures?

Even when it wasn't hushed up the world knew there was no cure and still kept air travel open to China which let the genie out of the bottle. The UK tracked the first few cases from China and then Italy and then it was out in the community so it was by then too late. The UK was no different from the rest of the world though in letting this virus spread. Maybe if the virus had started in some West African state there would have been more of a response to halt travel but China was too powerful.

I'm not sure that China being powerful was the sole reason flights were not stopped. I think also that the number of people travelling each day between China and the rest of the world is vastly more than the number of people travelling between Dem Rep Congo and the rest of the world. Wuhan had non-stop flights to Heathrow - nowhere in DRC has direct flights to the UK
There was simply too much economic activity between China and the rest of the world and too much money involved spread over different people for Govt, airlines and corporations around the world to agree voluntarily amongst themselves of the need to close all the links

I agree with LTNman though - had something nasty appeared in Lubumbashi (2nd city in DRC, 2 million urban residents), nobody would have thought twice about closing DRC off from the rest of the world - and even companies sourcing various mined minerals would have known to just keep quiet

Eastern European countrys like Poland met everybody coming off a plane from UK, this was 4 weeks ago, installed an App to ensure they stayed at home self isolating, checked the App daily requiring a response and sent Police around when no response was received. In addition children under the age of 18 are not allowed outside of home without an adult over the age of 18 present.

Poland has 7000 cases and 260 deaths v UK 94,000 and 12,000 deaths.

Internal policies by country are the remit of National Govts not EU.

Arlene Foster in NI refused to act even when Head Teachers who taught in NI but lived in Irish Republic had their kids schools closed. She demanded that schools open up even when head teachers had taken the decision to close because of risk. Insisting that schools being kept open was completely safe 2 hours before London ordered all schools closed and claiming that was what she meant all along.

Even when Dublin was offereing PPE from its flights to China she was insisting that Boris would provide even when clear he was not going to.

Speaking to Spanish newspaper El Pais Spanish tourism minister Reyes Maroto said:Spain's government says lockdown restrictions could remain when resorts reopen

I know that, but there are a good couple of contributors here and millions around the country that stick their fingers in their ears and can’t or don’t want to see they’ve been conned. The same brand of politics and the same political personnel that has resulted in the UK being in the position it’s in. This is relevant to aviation because it’s going to have a direct impact on the market and jobs going forward.

I was reading yesterday about the origin of the major outbreak in Munich,. It began when a senior employee in Wuhan travelled to the head office of Webasto (car components). She spent several days in seminars, in contact with the German management
By the time it was apparent, the infection was right through the business - one person got infected when they passed the salt in the canteen.
If she had joined the seminars by VC it might not have been as satisfactory but it would have saved hundreds of millions of euros and many lives.
There's a slogan in Hong Kong which says Things can't return to normal. Normal was the problem.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/cor...it-was-traced/

Course the infection gave the German health authorities the time to see what was coming and get their act together.

Helped by having maintained their manufacturing base instead of imagining that the country could live off financial services.

It also the case that Germany, immediately after WW2, had a regional government imposed on it by the allies. This was to prevent the Capital and one person from becoming too powerful. Consequently, each region has it's own netowrk of govt, hospitals and science companies that it can reach very quickly. There is not the obsession with centralised control evident in the USA and UK. So the constitution imposed by the USA and UK has served Germany well. For the 'winners'? not so much.

China has centralised control and just look at them.

TBH only Germany S Korea and Australia look as if they've handled this well so far.....................

New Zealand looks quite impressive too.
David