Flying in the COVID-19 Era: Science-based Risk Assessments and Mitigation Strategies on the Ground and in the Air Proceedings of a Workshop (2022) / Chapter Skim
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6 Ensuring the Future of the Airline Industry
6 Ensuring the Future of the Airline Industry
Pages 45-60
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From page 45... ...
DEMAND FOR AIR TRAVEL IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE Several speakers offered predictions -- with varying detail -- of what the next few years are going to look like for the air travel industry in terms of demand and financial outlook. For example, Laurie Garrow, the co-director of the Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility at Georgia Institute of Technology, said she did not expect recovery until 2023 or even 2025.
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From page 46... ...
Many airlines have survived only because of government aid, and the inflection point that comes at the beginning of a recovery "is actually the point of maximum risk." Unfortunately, he added, support for the airline industry is likely to be to be needed for some time, going forward into 2021 at the very least. The major factor influencing international air travel now is government travel restrictions.
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From page 47... ...
can play in helping airlines respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for future pandemics. Pinar Keskinocak, director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology, offered a variety of thoughts on how the airline industry might adapt to the future.
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From page 48... ...
Airport Response II: Consumer Confid 48 FLYING IN THE COVID-19 ERA umer Confidence FIGURE 6.2 The Swiss cheese model of infection prevention. SOURCE: David Kipp, Burns Engineering, presentation to the workshop, from Gensler, 2020, "The Return to Air Travel," June; courtesy of Gensler/View.
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From page 49... ...
In concluding, Shahidi reiterated that international cooperation is going to be important for the air transportation sector to recover. The Flight Safety Foundation has called for cooperation among governments and health authorities, airlines, airports, manufacturers, aviation professionals, and WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization "to really work together and have a coherent, coordinated internationally harmonized standard set of protocols to bring all of these different elements of the ecosystem together, so we can get this industry back up into recovery." The Role of Original Equipment Manufacturers Dealing with a pandemic requires an end-to-end approach, Manning said, involving not just the aircraft and airport but also people -- passengers, flight crew, ground crews, cleaning crews, and so on -- and the broader society.
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From page 50... ...
There is also the possibility of changes to the larger structure of the industry, she said; it is not clear, for instance, whether the hub-and-spoke network in use today will continue to be profitable in the future. Then, noting that most of the workshop's presenters had been focused on the passenger side of the airline industry, Keskinocak turned to the issue of air cargo and, in particular, the implications of the changes in passengers travel patterns on cargo capacity and supply chains.
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From page 51... ...
In one case there is the same small group of students gathering in a classroom on alternating days with proper public health measures, while air travel leads to the mixing of pas FIGURE 6.3 Changes in international cargo capacity: dedicated and belly. SOURCE: Pinar Keskinocak, Georgia Institute of Technology, presentation to the workshop, adapted from International Air Transport Association, 2019, "Air Cargo Market Analysis December 2020." © International Air Transport Association.
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From page 52... ...
The Future of Airports Disruption creates opportunity, Cohn said. In the case of the airline industry, he pointed to such examples as the invention of the modern boarding bridge in 1958, deregulation in 1978, and the introduction of the Airbus A380 FIGURE 6.4 The effects of vaccines with and without non-pharmaceutical interventions (Eff.
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From page 53... ...
The COVID-19 pandemic, Cohn said, has accelerated the adoption of various trends in the airline industry which otherwise might have taken years to be fully developed and implemented. In particular, various innovations in terminal design, such as automated boarding gates and biometrics, have been accelerated to meet COVID-related demands for a safe and socially distant passenger experience.
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From page 54... ...
Carrying out such changes is a way to maintain passenger confidence, he said. So understanding passenger expectations could inform design prioritization going forward, he said, "so instead of waiting for the pandemic or something else to drive change," airlines should realize that what passengers want may actually align with where the industry needs to move LESSONS FOR THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY FROM OUTSIDE THE INDUSTRY Looking outside the traditional borders of the air travel industry, several workshop presenters offered insights from other areas that could, they said, be applied by the aviation industry to improve its response to COVID-19 and any future pandemics and, more generally, make the industry stronger, more capable, and more resilient.
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From page 55... ...
Delays in collecting samples, transporting them, and reporting the results back to the individuals or their physicians slowed the time from sample to result by at least 24 hours. To deal with this, the center decided to rely on distributed testing using point-of-care platforms, such as could be deployed at urgent care centers or primary care physicians' offices.
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From page 56... ...
"So the point here for the aviation industry," he said, is "we can anticipate that there will be a future arc of time in which the vaccination program is beginning to subside, it has vaccinated a good portion of the population, and we have that herd immunity." Now is the time to start thinking about how to approach that post-pandemic period with its various measures that need to be put in place to reduce the risk of disease spread over the long haul. Marcus explained that the Aviation Public Health Initiative not only consists of a collaboration among many pieces of the aviation industry, but it is also in dialogue with a variety of government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Transportation Security Administration, the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and others.
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From page 57... ...
Furthermore, passengers could also be subjected to random screening for viruses, just as airports conduct random bag checks today, although such screening would need to done in a way that respected passenger privacy and civil liberties. Airports and other transportation hubs could also serve as community health sites, Gounder suggested, complete with community health workers who specialize in the needs of different kinds of travelers.
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From page 58... ...
Instead of simply thinking about how COVID will affect the commercial airline industry," she told the workshop audience, "I'd like to ask us to think a bit bigger: What role do our transportation systems have to play as global public health agents? " Attitudes Toward Air Travel in the COVID-19 Era Manca spoke about consumer attitudes to air travel in four cities around the world: London, New York, Shanghai, and Sao Paolo.
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From page 59... ...
London and New York travelers were the most sensitive to cost, especially for personal travel, while Shanghai travelers were less sensitive. Concerning attitudes and perceptions, Manca found that London and Sao Paolo travelers who were more concerned about catching COVID-19 at the airports or on board the plane were less likely to travel; the other two factors -- attitudes toward safety measures and attitudes toward quarantines -- did not make a significant difference among these travelers.
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From page 60... ...
For instance, she said, most of the people she talks to will not trust anything that comes from an industry stakeholder. "They're just distrustful, and so they want to hear it from someone else," she said, "and so we have to empower an entirely new information ecosystem and think about things like micro influencers or grassroots educators." She offered an example from her Dear Pandemic experience.
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