Agreed. As one who lived through SARS I can offer my (non-expert) opinion:
Covid-19 is a nasty bug, especially so for those who receive a high viral load (e.g. hospital and old-age facility workers who have inadequate PPE), and those in high-risk demographic groups (the elderly, and adults with pre-existing respiratory conditions, or those of any age group who are immunity-compromised). These groups need to be protected...no question. But for the vast majority of the population, as long as sensible precautions are taken (wash your hands, keep your hands/fingers out of your mouth/nose, try not to touch anything that is touched by masses of strangers, e.g. lift buttons, hard surfaces inside buses and trains) then the risk really is minimal...The media are, in my opinion, stoking fear and hysteria and irrational behaviour.

For those interested about the effects of Covid19 on Cheltenham festival goers, then Irish racegoers are probably a pretty good yardstick I would think.

An estimated 10,000 Irish racegoers attended the Festival over the period. One had tested + ive by April 2nd, some three weeks after the festival.

Did that story make headlines does anyone know?

Given that it's a totally meaningless statistic, probably not.

Of those 10,000, how many tested negative? How many haven't been tested at all? How do we know who the 10,000 were?

To Go back on thread:
Cargo ops will survive and especially the long haul wide body cargo operators as I guess long haul pax will be affected for some time to come reducing the overall cargo capacity.

There lies the crux: the longer the aviation market is down the better it is for the cargo operators. Once the airlines fly their usual schedules the cargo ops will be hit hard given the total market is most likely still below 2018/19 levels.

That seems questionable. Currently a lot of passenger airlines are retrofitting their widebodies to carry cargo instead. And the quick and easy solution is just removing the seats and carry a few extra crew as smoke warning system. In fact, from what i can see, freight rates are already sliding slowly back and that will increase, therefore the pressure on the cargo market will increase, considering that the large passenger airlines also do cargo business on large scales, i guess the integrated model will probably survive, although the pure cargo carriers have it easier in the short run, but probably more difficult in the long run.

Back to basics : What is flying currently : Cargo, military , some Sate flights and some business aviation . Add a few Domestic pax flights and some migrant workers charters . = between 5 to 10% of what was flying 4 months ago.
Nobody can maintain 100% of his infrastructure with those numbers for very long . We need the massive pax airliners back.
Domestic travel in large countries might come back early but international travel ?
For this you need reopening of the borders and lifting of travel bans/ quarantine etc.. and assurances that the virus is contained and you are not taking a high risk transiting through airports ,with questions like passing security , immigration queues, boarding gates, inside the aircraft , sharing toilets ,disembarkation buses, luggage collection , customs queues etc...
Insurance and medical assistance at the other end of the trip will also play a role in getting pax back in airplanes in large numbers at least in the beginning ...

How all this will be tackled and worked on will depend on how we will be in 6 months time . And it's all out of our hands :(

Fitting cargo in a pax aircraft is only short term and no real substitute for cargo aircraft as there is no cargo, no DG, and floor loading limits will be problematic. Its OK for cardboard boxes but you can't really build a pallet inside an aircraft. Rates are still climbing with the expected high in May.

Short haul express cargo seem to be more 'effected' if I believe the numbers from the integrators. It is more business as usual instead of the total mayhem that is general cargo right now. However I expect this to stay business as usual whereas I expect the general cargo to be affected once the long haul pax airlines are flying their normal schedules again. The question is if and when this is going to happen.

Bottom line: rubber dog **** is a good commodity at the moment.



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“South Korea's CDC has found that the test results for the suspected relapsed patients were false positives, and warned the test it used was not able to distinguish between live traces of the virus and the harmless dead samples which remain after patients have recovered.”

“The CDC added that unlike other viruses, such as HIV and chickenpox - which can break into the nucleus of human cells and stay latent for years before reactivating - the coronavirus stays outside of the host cell's nucleus."This means it does not cause chronic infection or recurrence," explained Dr Oh Myoung-don, the head of the CDC committee, meaning it is unlikely for patients to relapse in this fashion.”

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...twice-11981721

CP

”Under the terms of the agreement, the companies plan to establish manufacturing suites at Lonza’s facilities in the United States and Switzerland for the manufacture of mRNA-1273 at both sites. Technology transfer is expected to begin in June 2020, and the companies intend to manufacture the first batches of mRNA-1273 at Lonza U.S. in July 2020. Over time, the parties intend to establish additional production suites across Lonza’s worldwide facilities, ultimately allowing for the manufacture of material equivalent to up to 1 billion doses of mRNA-1273 per year for use worldwide assuming the currently expected dose of 50 µg. ”

Thats 1bn doses of one vaccine from one manufacturer. There are 7 other companies working on COVID19 vaccine based on the same technology. Then 7 more developing vaccine based on a different tech. Nothing is impossible, you just have to throw enough money at it.

https://investors.modernatx.com/news...-collaboration

CP

Extracts of Lufhansa CEO Carsten Spohr speech to the LH AGM due 5 May :
in less that 65 days we are back where we were 65 years ago
we carry at the moment 3000 pax a day , where we used to carry 300.000 a day
700 of our 760 aircraft are grounded .
Freight is in high demand, we removed the seats of 4 A330 to carry freight and plan to modify more , we call them "Preighters"
Small intra european restart expected in fall 2020 on limited scale..
New normal not expected before 2023. by them we will be a smaller airline with 100 aircraft less and 10.000 staff less.

Hundreds of aircraft on the ground in Southern California:

I wonder at what point it becomes financially unsustainable to maintain all these parked aircraft. If we are going to enter an 'L' shaped recession and the industry is going to contract by possibly 50% or more until there is a vaccine at some point scores of relatively new aircraft are not needed but there will be no market to sell them on. It costs quite a lot of money to service parked aircraft as well as the cost of the parking itself, so will it get to point when airlines find it cheaper to start wholesale scrapping of airframes?

Sad times..

The good news is that we do not need the space they are occupying anytime soon either. If you long term park them, the costs are very low, but you need a full maintenance check before you can reuse them.

Who would have thought that the Grand Old 747 would be the backbone of aviation in 2020?
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How do you come to that conclusion ?

Cargo.......

It's certainly true that 747 freighters have been busy lately, for example yesterday there were around 25% more flights by 747Fs than by, say, 777Fs.

But that's offset by pax 777s (obviously carrying belly cargo and many with some freight upstairs too), which operated around 20 times as many flights as the small number of pax 747s left.

So in terms of total lift, there's probably not much to choose between the respective contributions of the two types.

Well not for Lufhansa : it is retiring its 747-400s, decision on the 800s still pending and its current cargo is with 777F and MD11...plus now the converted 330s..

With the recent announcements of extending social distancing until we get a vaccine (which could take up to 2 years) and 14 day isolation on arrival into the country announced by France and possibly by the UK & others, is it possible to have a functioning passenger service for airlines for the foreseeable future?. The social distancing aspect means that no carrier can meet the seat factor requirements to be profitable and if you have to enter quarantine for 14 days how is that even practical for any business or leisure traveller except those leisure travellers on long stay vacations.

EU European comissaire for transportation, Adina Valean said yesterday on an interview here for a main portuguese media that EU has simply gave up and put aside the idea of reduced seats and the only mandatory rule on a flight inside EU rules would be the use of masks... (maybe some strong MoL/Stelios influence, who knows)...in their opinions, reduced seats and capacity would lead companies into very bad economic situations. Sorry, link in portuguese but you cán use Google translate :
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pub...ao-1914921/amp

When life begins to return to normal (!) I'm left wondering about the retraining costs for hundreds of thousands FD crews and ATC controllers, not to mention scores of other related jobs.

Cannot tell you for everybody , but for ATC we can keep partially current on simulators,most large facilities have their own , and the traffic will not restart at the flip of a switch , it will be gradual and people will be able to re- validate fairly easily as traffic comes up again ( if it does) .
The more immediate danger I see for us controllers is the actual number of controllers left when it will restart. If ANSPs are getting rid of staff , some are already planing a 50% lay off, there will be an issue as all previous experience shows the vast majority of them do not come back in the profession.
And recruiting and retraining new controllers take years. If we get over the peak in the next 4-6 months , if may work for us , if it last more than 2 years as some are predicting , this will be a major issue.

3 landings in a simulator and your good to go (in addition to your LPC/OPC every 6 months. Don't really see an issue there

That makes no sense though. If social distancing is not required on an airplane as long as you wear a mask then why do we need to enforce it anywhere else?. We can remove all those bits of tape on the floor telling where to stand..

Tommy Gavin

After 2 years not flying ?

cash-ash

Aer Lingus BHD - LHR had plenty of seats filled this morning.

Can't post the link however you can search for @KellyBonner on Twitter.

Aer Lingus responded to say they're reviewing their processes and procedures in light of the unexpectedly high loads on this route.

Comments from the public are interesting,

here is the pictures from the flight-
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-52539141

How can an airline fail to know how many seats it has sold on a flight ?

Pistonprop

Never fly with management pilots then ;)
Of course this is the very bare minimum. But as I do not see all the planes take to the air at the same time I really do not see many issues as long as you keep a 'core group' current in the mean time.
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Apart from the added comfort I think most people can see that leaving the middle seat free, when in the vast majority of cases people are seated inches behind and in front of you does not really solve the social distancing problem. Studies done after SARS showed that that at least two clear rows distancing was required to avoid infection. Clearly that is not going to be possible, so we need to find some other solution. The most likely scenario is a basket of measures, for example face masks, testing pre flight and the introduction of rules for acceptable behaviour and probably sanctions for non compliance. Add to this that a number of people will be disinclined to travel because of the risk and uncertainty then it is obvious that things are not going to be as they were before for some while yet.

French minister of Economy Bruno Lemaire announced this morning a ban of Domestic flights in France between city pairs that can be reached by train in less than 2,5 Hours.
Travel bans ( for non essential travel) and mandatory quarantine for outside Shengen Borders + UK in place to last until after Summer 2020.

This has no chance of passing EU scrutiny. Freedom of movement of people goods and services.

A link to an extraordinary video of what looks like a significant part of American Airline's fleet grounded in Pittsburgh with credit to Juan Brown (an AA B777 F/O who runs a YouTube channel under the ID "blancolirio").

here is link-

Not what was said ... the ban" of flight between city that can be reached by train in less than 2,5hours is part of the deal the government made with Air France with the 7 billion loan ... So other airlines will do what they want ... And it is when a fast train line is used and not only the 2h30 with other train ... So in fact it will be 6/7 city connected with Paris + air France can still do those flight but for connecting passenger only.

French government changed their mind about the quarantine and for all people coming from EU (so UK is included 😉) + Schengen area won t have to do a quarantine if traveling to France (can be found on Google)

Here a link but in French :
https://lepetitjournal.com/expat-pra...-france-279767

And in my opinion, lot of European countries will follow those kind of idea ... For example in Czech Republic, you need to have a negative covid test done in the last 4 days or you do quarantine.

It won't solve long haul travel but at least airline could resume flight in Schengen area.

​​​​​​Let s be honest, the sky is cloudy but nobody knows if it is going to turn CAVOK or heavy rain ! If you follow news like me, it change every 2days (French government literally said the total opposite with quarantine for every body 24hr before the update of now)

Thanks for that KPD! bit of finger trouble posting the link on my side. But they are spectacular and sobering images.

no problem - and the images certainly are.

Is it possible for the Aircraft manufacturers to modify the seating arrangement in AC to fit into social distancing norms, instead of leaving the middle seats empty. Like, completely removing the middle rows and creating separate aisle for each column so that there is less cross overs or touching between the pax. This will boost the confidence of travelling public who may otherwise avoid air travel

To have 6 feet between passengers, you'd have to build space in both laterally (as you said) and longitudinally, so that means removing half the seats in the aircraft. They've modeled the revenue per flight with these kinds of arrangements and they are a money-losing endeavor. Airplanes are just too high cost of machines for carting around a bunch of empty space. Not only that, but the air re-circulation in many aircraft is more beneficial to spreading disease than it is preventing it, so that will have to be reconsidered.