SINGAPORE – Aviation commentators are painting a grim picture of air travel once the Covid-19 virus has been beaten into submission.
Get ready for four-hour check-in times. Passenger disinfection tunnels. Thermal scanners. Facemasks onboard aircraft. And cabin crew dressed in full personal protection gear.
Most likely, your meal– if there is one – will come in a disposable sealed cardboard box. Forget the drinks service. And the airline magazine in the seat pocket will be a thing of the past.
Already, new stricter rules for all airlines operating in Thailand ban food and drink distribution on domestic flights.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand issued a series of measures that airlines must comply with when reintroducing flights. For passengers, it involves strict social distancing at check-in counters and wearing a face mask at all times even during the flight.
Lufthansa is restarting flights next week and has told all passengers to wear a facemask or scarf that covers their mouth and nose.
Lufthansa said, “It’s recommended that passengers wear them throughout the flight and at the airport both before and after the flight whenever the required minimum distance cannot be guaranteed without restriction.” The requirement for passengers to cover their faces will apply at least until August 31.
Emirates is keeping vacant seats in between individual passengers or family groups and not allowing cabin baggage on flights.
Passengers will have more space around them as airlines abandon middle seats in aircraft, although this move will come at a heavy cost to passengers who will be paying more for the privilege of flying in a sanitized bubble.
While keeping aircraft middle seats empty may help to reassure some travellers, about their safety, experts do not think it is viable long-term.
“In the longer run, it will not be feasible for airlines to practice physical distancing on board,” Auckland University of Technology tourism professor Michael Lueck said.
To maintain a 1.5- to two-metre distance between passengers in economy class, only alternate rows could be used, he noted.
The seat pitch on the Airbus 321 Neo is between 74 and 83 centimetres, meaning passengers are seated less than a metre apart from those directly in front of and behind them.
Japan Airlines has released a revised seat map for one of its domestic Boeing 737 jets. Eight out of 20 seats in JAL’s domestic ‘Class J’ business class cabin is blocked off. In economy, every middle seat of the 145-seat cabin has been marked as unavailable.
Aviation experts believe removing the middle seats on flights will force airlines to operate their aircraft at 55% to 65% capacity and this will send them broke.
OAG has looked at the numbers and suggests every passenger would need to pay 52% more than they currently do to fill the revenue gap that would be created by leaving the middle seat empty.
Lufthansa will no longer keep every other seat free to maintain social distancing on flights, but it said that due to the current low occupancy rate, seats will be allocated ‘as widely as possible’.
OAG’s advice is to enjoy the empty middle seat next to you while you can “because as demand recovers and it surely will at some point, that middle seat will once again be occupied and we will all grudgingly accept the experience; after all price has and most likely will always be king.”
Shashank Nigam, chief executive of Singapore-based aviation consultancy SimpliFlying, said Covid-19 is likely to prompt “a new age of sanitized air travel” that will see passengers pass through disinfection tunnels at airports, undergo heath checks and have their bags “sanitagged”.
They might also be required to present an immunity passport at check-in and again at border control when they arrive at their destination.
Simpliflying’s report, ‘The Rise of Sanitized Travel’ looks at the age of post-corona air travel and foresees dedicated in-flight janitors to clean lavatories and other high-touch areas and seats assigned at check-in, not online,
“Getting large numbers of people flying again will depend on giving them the peace of mind that they won’t be rubbing shoulders – or bumping elbows in economy – with infectious fellow travelers,” said Mr Nigam.
Andrew Charlton, managing director of the consultancy Aviation Advocacy, told The Times newspaper, “Even if it starts raining vaccines tonight, we are still looking at two years at least to get back to levels seen before the outbreak, and it is probably going to be more like five years.”
This forecast has been backed up by a survey produced by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) which indicated that 40% of respondents wouldn’t use airline travel for six months or more following the containment of COVID-19.