Airlines: when to expect take-off again?

After winter comes spring and every day that passes brings us closer to the day when we will take back our streets, our bars, our airports, planes and hotels. Yes, but when.

Back to normal: 3 months or 3 years?

Last week La Tribune informed us that the French airlines were expecting a return to normal operations in July. To be more precise, a restart in May, a ramp-up in June and a return to normal in July. Rather late July in our opinion.

Oxford Economics believes, however, that the return to normal will take 3 years. Irreconcilable points of view? No.

On the side of the French airlines one speaks about the restarting of the flight program. But until the load and the profitability are there it will take longer especially that in a climate of uncertainty or even fear, the restart will be done with discounts to accelerate. Oxford Economics is talking about a return to normalcy for the economy as a whole (only an aside on travel) and with a very US oriented prism where there is a strong chance that the post COVID-19 period will be nothing like it will be in Europe. On the one hand, massive layoffs (20% unemployment is expected) will force rehiring or even training (as was the case after 2008) and postpone the return to normalcy by one or two years. On the other hand, as much as possible, maintaining jobs at all costs in order to recover quickly, the lesson of 2008 having obviously been learned.

But even if it is only a “technical” return to normal, aren’t the French assumptions too optimistic?

Restart by industry

Speaking of the travel industry in the broadest sense, we can expect a recovery by industry with the hotel industry recovering before the airline industry. Why ?

First of all, it is easier to reopen a hotel that has closed and a fortiori to relaunch a hotel in reduced activity than to relaunch the flight program of an airline.

Then because the borders will reopen one by one and little by little. For an airline (especially in Europe), there is a strong risk to start with domestic routes (because the rest will be closed), then gradually the medium and long haul. And for a European airline to relaunch domestic flights is to relaunch not much and not much profitable. Whereas a hotel can more easily re-launch itself on a national clientele.

A restart by zone

If, as we said, it is likely that airline activity will only start again in a small geographical area before expanding, not all parts of the world will start again at the same time.

And without surprise we can bet that the timing of the restart will follow that of the pandemic: Asia, Europe, Middle East, Oceania, North America.

Although the case of Europe will remain special because the arrival of the pandemic, its spread and the actions of public authorities are not uniform. As for the United States, you can bet that they will come out of it long after the others.

A progressive reopening

Restarting is not opening. It is one thing for China to relaunch its domestic flights, but it will take longer to reopen the doors to foreigners. The same goes for Singapore. So it will take some time between the moment when, for example, the airline industry will restart in France and the moment when French people will be allowed to go to certain countries again.

We can even envisage a disaster scenario. That the pandemic is stopped for example in France, Italy and Spain and that it hits hard in Sweden, the UK and the Netherlands. If foreign countries take as a reference not the countries but the Schengen area (which would be only logical), the ability for nationals of one country to be allowed to fly to another will not depend on the infectious situation of that country but on that of its geographical area. In other words, the dangerousness of a country’s nationals will be considered equal to that of the worst student in its geographical area. Unless we forget Schengen for a while, that each member country protects itself from the others and opens up only on a case-by-case basis to protect its ability to open up to the world. This is not utopian because technically we are already there.

It will be necessary to separate (even if it will remain linked) the capacity of an airline to fly and the one it will have to take its nationals in certain parts of the world. Those with the largest transit clientele may restart more quickly.

So when is the travel recovery coming?

When we read all this, we can find very optimistic the position of the French airlines, no? Not necessarily so. We assume that they discuss with the state services and benefit from forecasts that we do not have. Although in this day and age who trusts forecasts….

The fact that Air France is flying planes between mid and end of May is not an illusion, at least not today. Mais à mon avis uniquement pour les vols intérieurs. We can hope to go to Europe by August, to Asia in autumn, to the USA at the beginning of winter? We can even imagine that its long-haul network in Paris will only be made up of connections at the beginning with a ban on taking French passengers outside the Shengen area.

KLM has already announced its flight schedule with a restart in early April with 57 destinations. But even with such a low number, even if we want to believe, we have many doubts. But there is nothing to stop you from preparing for it, in case the stars align.

So yes, you will surely fly again within 3 months, but with no guarantee of going very far even if we would like to be wrong. At TravelGuy we want to dream but we prefer to be realistic because we know that the worst is always possible.

In any case, the process of returning to normal will be very complex. We will keep you informed as much as possible.

Photo : take off by frank_peters via Shutterstock