COVID-19 Fears of Flying Travel with the new normal by John Hardy John Gradek, former Air Canada executive and now an aviation leadership and airline management instructor at McGill University Everybody’s talking about the new normal. Airlines are doing something about it. They have no choice. It’s not only about good business but, suddenly, it’s about survival and re-jigging the industry. Despite the best public health and government guidelines, the travel industry − and particularly airlines − rely on the critical and unpredictable factor of consumer confidence. It’s the ‘make it or break it’ factor. Reopened restaurants, salons, stores, gyms and hotels and resumed flights rely on the impossible intangibles of trying to predict and strategize for customer moods and worries. Although there’s consensus that life and any kind of normal cannot and should not be on indefinite hold, health-care, business and government officials also agree that until a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available, consumer confidence will likely continue to be a significant social andbusiness factor. For the airline business, the undisputed backbone of the travel industry, there’s lots at stake. In April, the global airline group IATA estimated that the 2020 bottom line will show a 39.8 million reduction in Canadian passenger volumes. Considering the sudden mid-June infection spikes in some popular snowbird hot spots such as Florida, Georgia and Arizona, and encouraging signs that reopening and a gradual recovery has begun, IATA stats show that the four COVID-19 shutdown months will likely end up being a staggering US$314 billion hit to the airline industry. Travel and airline experts warn about important added challenges for some snowbird-popular, but smaller airlines (including WestJet, Sunwing, Zoom, JetBlue, Allegiant and others), which rely on the cost-efficiency of squeezing in as many passengers as possible and maximizing turnarounds by limiting aircraft on-the-ground downtime. The lowfare airline formula may have to change with more time-consuming intense cleaning of the aircraft and longer airport and boarding procedures. There is blunt but unanimous airline consensus: the goal is to maximize safety without going out of business. Unlike some other still-closed or reopening business sectors, the travel industry is complex, big money (very big money!) and fiercely consumer-driven. Travel experts and airline analysts caution that – pre- or post-vaccine − luring back the customer and re-earning consumer confidence will be a challenging and tricky maneuver. “Mitigation actions such as wearing masks, washing hands, plexiglass shields, intense cleaning, distancing and other stop-gapmeasures will allay the fear of some travellers, not all,” says John Gradek, a former executive at Air Canada who now teaches aviation leadership and airline management at Montreal’s McGill University. “The new check-in and boarding process, digital boarding passes, new luggage rules, cabin cleaning, limiting the on-board sale of snacks and food and strict rules for washroom use are intended to create as contact-less an experience as possible, whether at the airport or aboard an aircraft.” 38 | www.snowbirds.org
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