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