Bad News for Airlines
A study by Inmarsat suggests Travel Habits are Changed Forever.
Flying habits are set to change drastically for the long-term, with eight in ten airline passengers (83%) not expecting to return to their previous travel routines once the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
Only a third (34%) of passengers surveyed have taken a commercial flight since the pandemic began, and this appears to have sparked a shift in attitudes to flying. Four in ten passengers (41%) expect to travel less by any means and a third (31%) plan to fly less. This sentiment is even higher among Asian passengers, with 58 per cent in India and 55 per cent in South Korea planning to travel less in the future.
Despite this change, there are early signs that travellers are beginning to feel confident about flying again; almost half (47%) of passengers surveyed expect to feel ready to fly within the next six months.
The ‘Passenger Confidence Tracker’ is the world’s largest survey of airline passengers since the pandemic began. It reflects the views and attitudes of 9,500 respondents from 12 countries across the globe about the future of flying.
Passenger Confidence Tracker
US Passenger Confidence
- Within the US, only 14% are ready to fly today
- Another 14% will be ready next month.
- 5% think it will take longer than a year.
- 10% will wait for the end of Covid.
- 8% will wait for a vaccine.
Even those who are ready to fly expect to do so less often.
Mish
It isn’t a piece of great news for me. I read the TripAdvisor article about the most famous casinos in Toronto – link to torontomike.com and have already made a plan to visit each establishment. … But because of the problem with air flights, I decided to go to Canada by car. Now I don’t worry anymore because I have the opportunity to visit another country in this way.
There is a lot of pent-up demand probably more that I have seen before in that industry. Airlines exist because it is a very good way to get around and for long distances nothing beats it. Unless you want to spend half your vacation driving to get there or spending all your time in a car getting to business meetings people will come back to flying and doing it a lot.
Last spring a certain country criticised closing flights from it, but this article suggests international travel is still a main vector
While, if you read Spanish, this thread explains what a return trip to China is like now
So 75% of American travelers would be interested in flying within the next year. That’s a good number.
I have had Covid and am thus more or less immune.
Why am I not flying? Because I can’t.
It’s not consumer confidence but rules that are the main impediment.
I don’t believe it. Once we have a vaccine and Covid-19 fades from our collective memories we’ll go back to traveling. How do I know? Simple. Previous shocks such as 2008’s financial crisis altered saving and spending habits for a while but then many went back to their old ways. Recidivism runs high
Have you not heard? Things will never go back to normal.
You will be able to fly, but only by allowing them to scan your nano-ink digital bioSecurity hazard passport.
CORRECT LINK
Careful, you are ruining the narrative.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people
Shown is the rolling 7-day average. Limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death means that the number of confirmed
deaths may not be an accurate count of the true number of deaths from COVID-19. link to journals.sagepub.com
Avoid restaurants and gyms like the plague.
With masks and social distancing in restaurants here, life has gotten almost back to normal. I am not afraid to eat out…..so far…..infections rates are very slightly elevated over the summer levels, but not horrible. I eat out at least twice a week…and have been since June. Less risk than going to work, if you’re me.
I’d fly to a non-hotspot destination…..but I’d wear a mask and eye protection both while in close quarters.
Wasn’t going to the gym anyway….. 🙂
My wife has a condition and is recently out of surgery. We can’t eat out yet.
Hey as long as you wear a mask what is there to worry about?
In March I expected to get sick at some point….and felt like if I got sick, there was a good chance of dying. But I went to work anyway, and just wore my mask and gloves and instituted new protocols aimed at creating the best infection control we could accomplish.
Now, eight months later, I think the protocols are still not perfect…but they will work to keep any virus loads I encounter very low….and that even if I get sick, I’m likely to get prompt effective treatment that can potentially save my life, and probably even keep me off a ventilator….which is my idea of a horror movie anyway.
So my attitude is different….but I still don’t make light of the disease, which still has the potential to randomly kill healthy people here and there.
I hated to fly even before 9/11/2001. I can and will give it up forever,
Detroit Metro Airport recently build a whole airport complex on its existing site, floating 1.7 billion dollars of bonds, 1.6 billion which Moodys upgraded from A2 to A1 in February of 2020. On any given weekday prior to the introduction of covid rules, there were multitudes of aircraft mostly AB 319, 320s and MD 80s in the sky in a holding pattern waiting for clearance to land. Not anymore. Detroit Metro has become a dead zone. I wonder what happens to the bond rating now, or the cash to fed the debt cycle? link to metroairport.com
If you lend money to Detroit, you better be getting a good rate for that risk…
USVI looks pretty good for Christmas….negative test required within 5 days of departure.
It’s high season….tickets are on the high side, considering. But the virus levels there are very low.
Cyril King airport is ALWAYS a zoo…but it’s extremely well ventilated, lol.
Cancun airport was a zoo! ahhh I will pass ty
We only fly once or twice a year. To Europe for vacation. We will fly/travel again as soon as British Airways sends me an email saying: Mask-free flying.
Mish I don’t know about all that, but i can tell you that last week I landed in Cancun — a live a few hours away from that “lovely” town. Cancun airport was a zoo! The place was absolutely full. Now, everyone was wearing a mask, but you can forget about social distancing! Young people there for a “PARTAY” (I kid you know I hear that word a number of times.
TSA says that volume is at 83% of what it was before the Covid. Now when we left Canada the situation was very different — the airport was very quiet, parking was wide open; so we were very surprised when we landed in Cancun.
have a nice day
I miss Tulum. Not going there either since you said that. Thanks for the intel.
I am already not planning to ever fly again as long as the FAA certifies the 737 MAX as acceptable for passenger flights, because you can plan your trip around not usung that jet only to find at boarding they have switched your craft out for a Max.
You will then have no choice unless you paid about double for a refundable ticket and cancel at the boarding call. Even if you do purchase a refundable ticket you may find their definition of refundable is a lot different from yours and the one definition that means anything to you is not one the airlines will consider, instant refund, I had to wait months and fight with United for a refund when they cancelled not only my flight but the whole route after I booked a first class ticket in February. Those were all automatically refundable bafore Covid, and when the FAA ordered them to refund my payment they decided a voucher good for travel within 12 months met the order. I said no, and the fight started all over again. So they finally agreed to actually credit my card back the more than 600 bucks but that still took them weeks.
Screw that. I will never get aboard the Max, not even if they have fixed it. Boeing, once one of the most admired brands in capitalism, has been taken over by greed and blame shifting, they have captive regulators, and they do not give one puckered rat’s ass about your safety or life. Untill all that is changed I will not do business with any airline that thinks it is taking my money then forcing me to fly aboard a jet so fundamentally unstable that hundreds of people are now dead because ppilots could not control the damned planes, and any jet that needs that level of Rube Goldbergian retro fixes is not a plane any passenger should be forced to ride in.
Adn there is the thing, with Covid airlines can get by without them, they have enough capacity with other planes to not need the Max. They should be decertified as passenger jets and converted to cargo planes, or sold off to other nations that are still willing to take the risks associated with flying this pile of jet engined junk.
Goodbye for now, I am not posting here again till the edit function is restored.
” as the FAA certifies the 737 MAX as acceptable for passenger flights, because you can plan your trip around not usung that jet only to find at boarding they have switched your craft out for a Max.”
“Goodbye for now, I am not posting here again till the edit function is restored.”
Ah, you’re leaving the first time we’re ever on the same page for an issue?
I’ll send Mish some antidepressants.
Fuck you.
I get that alot.
That was a bit harsh. After all, he/she just found some common ground with you…
Go easy on him… we’d all threaten to stop reading a blogger if we couldn’t our comments on his posts too. Right?
I only usually fly a half dozen times a year. No reason to fly for business except for training….might do that twice a year….sometimes more if I take some long course on weekends.. Maybe three or four trips for pleasure or to visit my kids.
Kids in NYC and Chicago….that’s currently not a risk I want to take, I often travel to Utah for both training and recreation…that’s out for sure, for a while. California is on my usual list…..that might be my first trip….but the fires have affected the areas I usually visit, and so far it’s seemed a little premature.
Businesses have embraced the workarounds….and it’s likely to not go back because there are savings to be had by not flying…….and now that the rubicon has been crossed..there will no doubt be permanent changes.
My kids and grandkids are in New York and Vermont and my parents are in Florida so when we go there we have to spend lots of time in planes. I am waiting for the vaccine. I really don’t want to be one of the last ones to catch Covid.
I wouldn’t mind flying too much if of course there is a working vaccine since it would be too often however things like trains, metros and buses is another matter. I would rather drive. I wonder if people will rush back to the cities.
9/11 did that for me. I used to fly almost every week on business back then. I remember being at Dulles trying to fly home to Chicago at the end of January 2002. Chicago was having an uncommonly warm stretch for winter until the day I had to fly out of the cesspool they call DC. Blizzard of course!
So I moved up my flight to avoid weather, which of course red flagged my ticket that set me on course to airport security hell. It never got better.
I am surprised Americans have put up with it this long. I knew in January 2002, the days of flying for business were coming to an end.
It took a few years after 9/11 before they made flying truly as sucky as possible.
The “no liquids through TSA” was a sh*ty change. That was the falling domino for me.
2003 was the last time I flew. I’m done with petri-dish travel of any mode.
I got a car ad (Volvo XC90) with this blog post. I don’t mind driving and my wife would like the seating arrangement shown in the ad.
That’s the future, for the next few years at least.
Nothing lasts forever. Assuming we do finally gain control of this virus then travelers will slowly revert to their old behaviors. It will likely take a long time though.
yup, I doubt we’ll be worried about Covid-2019 in 2023. And most people have the memory of a hamster. By 2025 people won’t be thinking about pandemics much at all.