Kushan Mitra
Time and again in history, a great age is almost always followed by a time of darkness. That is where the aviation industry finds itself now
In the first couple of months of 2020, your columnist made two trips to the West Coast of the United States. Each time he boarded flights that took over 14 hours, a couple of flights even passed over, as near makes no difference, the North Pole. Travel that once took days and several transfers with the potential of lost luggage and what not, now took just one, maybe two flights, in relative luxury even in Economy Class, thanks to inflight WiFi and a better choice of movies than most streaming platforms.
Sure, the food still could taste bland but that possibly had more to do with the human body's physiology at higher altitudes where taste buds often go for a toss. But the most fascinating thing was that in early 2020, these ultra long-haul flights had become almost ordinary. Indeed, while rumours of an impending pandemic started to filter out, global air travel was on a massive high. It was growing at an unprecedented pace and a shortage of aircraft after the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX was the biggest concern.
Now, while it is far too soon to sound the death knell for very long-haul flights as Air India has just started a Bengaluru to San Francisco flight, something that would have been technologically impossible just a decade ago, global air travel is today in a quagmire. Thousands of planes are grounded across the world with demand having collapsed in the wake of the pandemic. International travel, which had been truly democratised with lower fares and increased connectivity, is now on life support. It isn't as if there are no more flights; with strict quarantine measures and several countries restricting travel to citizens and legal residents, travel has become essentially one for emergencies and repatriation. Of course, there are some who have to travel for business, particularly in an age of globalised workforces, but that is now being done without families.
Will air travel recover from this devastating hit? There are many ways to look at it, but one has to understand that there are different types of air travel. It is evident from the numbers emerging that the Indian economy is on the upswing and local business travel will almost certainly recover. Once all the States fully open up, one can expect air travel to regain some normalcy by the middle of 2021. Of course, there are other factors: While evidence points to a decreasing caseload of COVID-19 and the vaccination rollout has been impressive in India, the emergence of new variants, particularly in Brazil and South Africa against which existing vaccines are less effective, is alarming. If one of these variants is able to spread inside India, it could again lead to havoc. That said, domestic air travel will emerge healthier post-pandemic, not just because of business demand but also leisure demand as travellers after a year of being cooped up at home will want to travel and, with foreign destinations closed off, domestic tourism is bound to pick up.
But as for international air travel, it could be several months, even a year or two, before things come even close to recovery. There are however a few trends that might change, the first being more direct connectivity thanks to nations having different rules for transit passengers.
While this might again change going forward, particularly as a vaccine is deployed, this fundamental change, coupled with the emergence of modern aircraft, will pose an existential threat to airlines that have for years survived primarily thanks to connecting passengers.
There is also the likelihood of a “vaccine passport”. Anyone travelling to Sub-Saharan Africa or certain Latin American countries needs to show that they have taken a yellow fever shot; now this requirement will likely be global. Popular destinations, like in South-East Asia, have travellers from many countries and preventing them from interacting is impossible. While COVID-19 rages on in North America and Western Europe, the only way to protect both citizens and tourists from bringing in the virus is some sort of vaccine passport. This might actually be a good time for India to explore the opportunity to embed its passports with RFID chips that can store vaccination information.
Then, of course, there comes the very concept of necessary travel. This pandemic has made us all realise that working from home is an option for many people. Work travel and large conferences are not going to go away, but will big shows such as motor shows take place or will the ‘2020 Auto Expo' at Greater Noida go down in history as the “last big show”? The huge trade shows, even for the airline industry such as the events in Farnborough and Paris, might never be the same and that will take a toll on business-class travel. Low-cost international leisure travel might come back roaring thanks to the introduction of new aircraft such as Airbus's A321XLR, of which several are on order by India's largest airline, IndiGo.
But we do not really know how we, air passengers who love travelling, will react in a few months, once a considerable number of people have been vaccinated. We still don't know whether nations will have quarantine rules up in place if the virus evolves into a deadlier form. But one thing is certain, aviation is in a dark place right now and it could be another year before there is any hope of recovery.
