The Death of British Aviation
 

Apologies for the dramatic title, but it may not be much of an exaggeration.

The media have featured nothing but doom pronouncements on layoffs and airline closures.

Why has there been zero support for our critical industry from either the Transport Minister, Grant Shapps, or his junior underling the Aviation Minister, Kelly Tolhurst?

More importantly, what can we take as a professional group to help stop the rot before it is too late? I fear many pilots, engineers, crew, and office staff will never work for an airline again. This is a tragedy.

You raise an interesting point.
Just when folk in Aviation should be working together in the UK to lobby Government, the ability of people to fight each other knows no bounds!
For instance, BA's BALPA reps are having a battle between the long serving pilots and the shorter service ones. BA's BASSA crew branch are battling with BA's MF crew branch, and their overall TU is trying to do away with their jobs completely by asking the Government to take away BA's slots - which will go to Foreign airlines.

No, Aviation just cannot work together for the greater good.

Personal self interest Rules OK!!!

Interesting behaviour given the industries penchant for CRM & Human Factors.

AO, you might want to call it "self interest" but perhaps in these times it's "self survival".

BoJo and his lot are far too scared to be seen to support what has become the scapegoat for all environmental criticism.

If this happened 10 or 20 years ago there would have been far more help.

However this is now the age of XR, Twitter and Greta. What party would want to upset the keyboard warriors by financially supporting the perceived demonic industry of the airline industry?

This unfortunately is a perfect storm for some.

That's very true the environmental lobby has definitely played a role in suffocating the chances of large amounts of aid to the UK aviation sector.

I wonder if the environment lobby will start to get even more upset when there are very few or no aircraft around when They want to go on holiday?

Infighting isn't going to help anyone; BALPA et al need to present a coherent case to government for support to those folk who have been impacted financially.
​​​​​​The majority of holidays are taken in Europe/North Africa, LCC 's are better placed to respond to demand. IMO, if you want to go on holiday, flights will be there.
Aviation isn't alone in taking a massive hit, this is unprecedented and across the board; aviation will recover although we're talking years, not months.
Think about the consequences for commercial and retail property, I believe that these will take infinitely longer to recover, probably never reaching previous levels.
Might also want to thinks about pension funds exposure to Covid19 impacted funds

I got a month ban for pointing out that our pathetic politicians are in thrall to climate change activists and in particular the teenage wunderkid from Sweden. The bonkers reality we now find ourselves in as professional pilots is indeed to witness the decline of our incredible industry. Political correctness is lapped up by generally spineless politicians and a supine media. The vast majority of them and the aforementioned climate change warriors are in the main not educated scientifically and generally have zero understanding of scientific or engineering principles. I include the graduates from Oxbridge etc. I doubt whether most of them could explain the inner workings of the internal combustion engine. Sometimes you get the same stuff here as the professional pilot part of pprune appears to be disappearing at great speed. It’s a real shame.

My tuppence worth is the General public's arse has collapsed,they have swallowed this Covid garbage hook line and sinker.Over 200 countries have this virus installed in their territory,some idiots think that's containment, and we are still having travel bans.Just completed my 16th day of quarantine,I gave them a couple of bonus days due to the crap weather here in the UK.Maybe I shall just go to Havana!

The Human race can't work together for the greater good.

Perhaps the reason for that is that the population density for the human species is too high. There are too many on the planet?

Time to face facts
 

The aviation industry will not rebound from this in the way everyone on this forum is hoping. That is the reason airlines aren’t being bailed out by the government - they’d rather throw good money after bad somewhere the public actually cares about rather than lose their shirt on an industry that they want to phase down - for many reasons, not least the environmental ones (that the public ‘cares’ about). Why won’t it bounce back? Because business customers (like me) have found a different, more convenient and cheaper way of working online. Having flown around the globe several times on business trips (with large teams of people filling the seats and costing a fortune) I can’t imagine ever having to do it again...and for that I am profoundly grateful. Will I fly on business? Probably - down from 10 - 15 long hauls per year to zero and the same amount of short hauls to just a handful. Everything else can be done online. Will I still want to go on holiday? Yes, but not if prices sky-rocket to compensate. The aviation industry is on a cliff edge...thank you for taking care of me and my fellow travellers...but now it’s time for you to take care of yourselves and your families.

I see it that he wants to come across as strong in the fight against the virus, pulling out all the stops etc.

Of course this is all in the hope that people will forget his foolish behavior at the start of the pandemic that involved gloating about going into a hospital with COVID patients and shaking everyone's hand.

He is more than willing to sacrifice UK aviation if it means saving votes.

U.K. aviation can never recover with these insane last minute knee jerk quarantines - how can anyone book reliably for holiday or a work trip ?

Stop blaming your local politicians. Look instead at the source of the real problem. Are you helping to 'feed' it? Or are you actively doing your bit to starve it? Or are you just sitting and whinging?

Don’t be under any illusion it would have been better with another party in power. Look at the heavily Lib Dem Labour cross party report. Your quarantine on return you’ll be in a specific hotel under observation! Aviation would be in a far bigger mess.

There are many factors at work here, not least of which is the dawning realisation of the public that in aviation at least, it is much better to arrive than travel. Does anybody actually enjoy flying? Passengers and pilots seem to agree that it’s not fun anymore and hasn’t been for a looong time. Up until now there were no alternatives, however, in the non-aviation corporate world, non-flying and the alternative of remote working are ‘taking-off’ (apologies) in a big way, driven by cost savings and a real lack of desire with the decision makers (purse string holders) to get on a plane. Yes, you’ll still have the holidaymakers but businesses have grounded themselves (largely), for good (...or bad, depending on your perspective). Sadly there is now massive over-capacity for the foreseeable...and that means scaling down. It’s pure economics, the ‘eco-warriors’ are just sitting on the sidelines feeling a bit smug. The aviation industry will survive of course and perhaps it will be ‘fun‘ once again...just on a fraction of the scale today.

Well if you had done any research, you would have seen that is not true.

" British carriers

British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair have all taken advantage of the COVID Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF) set up by the Bank of England. British Airways received £300 million ($374 million) while Ryanair received £600 million ($749 million). easyJet has accessed GBP £600 million ($750m) from the same source."

This is from simpleflying.com but I cannot post the full link.

Since all the airlines are still there, how do you think government money would have changed matters ? You are presumably not asking for money to pay everybody until the industry is back to 100%, so what is the realistic situation that you would want now ?

I've read and heard from several sources that the domestic airline industry in China is back to about 98% of their previous (pre-China flu) operational tempo.

These ridiculous ill thought quarantine rules are strangling the life out our industry.

The most frightening aspect is the government has no end game. Numbers are increasing throughout Europe and now we have this crazy threshold for infections of 20 cases per 100.000.

Within 3/4 weeks there won’t be many places we can travel in Europe without having to quarantine on return.

While all this is killing the industry hospital admissions rates and death rates are not rising as earlier in the year.

Clamping down travel from locations with confirmed cases would have made sense half a year ago. Right now, it hardly does. The vast majority, and by that I mean well over 90% of all cases, are a result of domestic transmission. Imported cases are no longer a major source of new infections. So, how does it make sense to impose some seriously tough restrictions over what accounts for a minority of cases instead of directing the same policing resources towards stamping out the major source of cases, namely the non-adherence to any safety rules WITHIN the country?

Screw UK aviation into the ground, reduce emissions, pretend we’ve all gone green, eliminate the need for RW3 at Heathrow and even the local MP (and many more Home Counties MPs) keep their jobs, siphon that money off into a vanity project called HS2

Market forces,self levelling, supply and demand,no atheists in slit trench’s and aren’t the Tories wonderful........

You needed to add at the end of your statement.... IMHO

The truth is, the world has a growing population full of young people who do not wish to stay in one place. Travel is in the human psyche just like sex. When this finishes, give it a year there'll be the biggest boom in Airline travel that the world has ever seen... IMHO

Wonderful to hear such positiveness at last,negativity seems to have taken over the UK mind set.

Unions in UK do nothing to help members. Take your subscription but when needed, the rabbit in the headlights appears and you are left on your own.

Businesses around the world, not just in the aviation sector, are falling apart. Governments, be they UK, US, European, are making it up as they go along because they were simply not prepared - they had no contingency for the "what if" situation.

All of this whilst China appears to carry on as normal. They've done their bit maybe and yet we still rely on the country for help. I don't just mean help with PPE either.

Never going to happen but the world (except China), needs to rally together and tackle industry, business and commerce to help all get back on their feet. It will take years maybe but whilst each country has it's own idea of recovery, the country next door does something different. Revolving door springs to mind.

ericsson16

I fully agree and 'IMHO' I feel that polax52 has got it spot on.

Cautious measures now might appear painful, for a while, but if that is what is needed to get the domestic economy opening up, that will provide the future demand for air travel. British Aviation will never die, it may look a little different eventually but it will survive ... and do well.

There... said it!

Air travel may well boom again when this pandemic is finished....IF its ever truly finished! We are seeing the second wave hitting now, and who knows, there may be a third or fourth wave!
Everyone seems to cling to the thought that this will be over by next year...I am not so sure!
Then there is still Greta and her tree huggers to contend with...and oil isnt going to stay cheap forever...
The Duke of Wellington , when he was Prime Minister in the 1830s, said that he disliked the coming of the railways, "Because it enables the working classes to move about"....I think this is still Govt policy..."They" dont want us moving about any more...they want us sto stay at home and work online, where "they" know where we are and what we are doing...
Jetting off to Malaga for 2 weeks every summer is just what they dont want us doing!
Just my 2 rands worth...and I am not allowed to travel anywhere!!

Polax and Trossie,

Agree that travelling in the blood, long distance tourism may resume but that's generally economy.
The airlines biggest cash cow has been business/premium travel and IMHO is not going to rebound as fast as tourism.

Aviation will survive but will have to evolve.

Ok; “IMHO”

Also, IMHO; You are perhaps making the mistake of ‘baseline trend neglect’. Young people are even more capable/‘happy’ to work online/remotely further negating the aviation/business bounce back. I agree, they (‘The Young’) will want to travel for leisure but the economics mean that their business travel will be down - because old codgers like me - in my mid-40s who are the decision makers on corporate travel - will say no. From what I can see the new generation of ‘Young’ are also finding it harder to build careers, harder to break free from their parental home and are struggling to make ends meet while saving for a large deposit for a house/flat (unlike my generation who wrecked it all with 95%+ mortgages). Are they really going to be able to fulfil their wanderlust in a way that will compensate for the loss of business travel, say, within the next ten years and are they going to accept the environmental impact (either real or perceived)? All, again, IMHO.

Trossie

(IMHO) You are quite correct - British Aviation will survive. It will look a LOT different though and SOME, indeed, will do well - in every crisis there is opportunity - but who will grasp the opportunity most fearlessly and firmly and who will cling on for dear life and succumb in the end regardless?

Chill out, nobody's monitoring your life to the extent that they want you to stay at home 24/7, work online and not go anywhere so that you're easier to track. Each one of us is just one of the many - and our daily activities are rather uninteresting to the New World Order or whatever you call it. And, even if someone wants to track your movement - that's easy enough, given that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket these days.

Aviation will still be there once this is over, and I don't buy the idea that it will be any smaller than pre-COVID. However, some things will look different. I think that this was one last nail in the coffin of proper short-haul legacy. Just watch what the likes of Wizz air are doing now. Expanding at Gatwick, Donny and where not else, while legacy carriers struggle with a high cost base and a severely reduced income. So, I see it as the LCC/ultra-LCC model becoming the standard for short-haul, simply because it's the only chance to catch up with the pioneers in that category. On short-haul routes, there will be this sort of no-frills service for the lower market segment, potentially an increased number of business jets for the premium segment - and not much in between.

People have got poorer because of this Pandemic but a large group of people are richer e.g. Tesla shareholders. Just watch premium class travel boom as well.

Business travel will of course recover, for the same reason it was still growing in 2019 - despite Zoom and Teams already being here.

Middle managers at Companies A, B, C can all crow about how much they’re now saving on travel.

Right now it seems like an obvious win because everyone’s grounded.

Until Company D decides to get on the plane, and poaches that big account. And suddenly, everyone’s back travelling again.

Maintaining relationships and taking honest feedback is crucial in big business.

Otherwise, watch your logos churn without giving a moments thought about you.

Business travel will be back, not immediately, but it’ll work itself out.

True. Face-to-face contact will never, ever be completely replaced by Zoom. Business travel has an important social component to it which is unbreakably connected to live interaction.

The fact that we have only known life for a couple of decades doesn't mean that it has started with our birth. It was there long before - and all sorts of diseases were an intrinsic part of it, often being far more dangerous and lethal than COVID-19. Neither of them fundamentally changed the nature of humans as social beings. And COVID-19 won't do it either. Ask some of those who are working from home now whether they would like to spend the rest of their working lives like that (and also stay put on their vacations and days off, effectively limiting life to the space between the sofa and the grocery store). The vast majority of those I know are actually very much looking forward to returning to the office! Even those who absolutely loved working from home in the first month or two miss their social interactions now.

The UK is uniquely positioned in many aspects, with London being one of those global hubs of everything. Without aviation, it just cannot function in its present way that ensures its prosperity. Think about it, how many world capitals can boast the same number of global headquarters or the same diversity as London? Not many! So, there is and there will be a lot to fuel that need for travel. And did I mention that not many of these people would be content to not seeing their families abroad ever again or spending all holidays till the end of their lives in good old Cornwall? So, the market is there. It's a matter of time for things to calm down and it will reach and exceed its 2019 levels once again.

As others have said Face to Face contact will always be important, Zoom is the modern 'it' thing to be seen doing it won't last.

You sound exactly like the guy who said online shopping would never catch on back in the nineties :p