Covid-19; Impact on the aviation industry

easypazz

Total shutdown is next step. No flights in or out. Everybody self quarantine and hope there are no new cases for a few weeks then only start flying in and out on a small scale with everybody tested on arrival.

rockonollie

Aer Lingus finally waiving change fees for flights through May.....it was a very bad look for them only offering to waive for new bookings and not ones made prior to the pandemic.

easypazz

rockonollie wrote: »

Aer Lingus finally waiving change fees for flights through May.....it was a very bad look for them only offering to waive for new bookings and not ones made prior to the pandemic.

I wonder does it make financial sense for them?

Say 90% change date then they can cancel flight completely and only have to refund the last 10%

rockonollie

easypazz wrote: »

I wonder does it make financial sense for them?

Say 90% change date then they can cancel flight completely and only have to refund the last 10%

Most likely.....there's also the future business aspect of it.....

Tenger

rockonollie wrote: »

Aer Lingus finally waiving change fees for flights through May.....it was a very bad look for them only offering to waive for new bookings and not ones made prior to the pandemic.

In fairness BA did the same, I saw the reaction on their twitter account.

trellheim

same company .... Willie Walsh calls the shots across IAG

crisco10

easypazz wrote: »

I wonder does it make financial sense for them?

Say 90% change date then they can cancel flight completely and only have to refund the last 10%

Absolutely must have been part of the decision. I've a few flights with Finnair coming up, and on 9th March they offered any flights free change up until end of November.
Then 10th of March they announced a heap of flight cancellations. clearly a strategy to move people off flights they were going to cancel anyway.

Nijmegen

To be honest I can't see now how this isn't a global recession with a lot of job losses across a lot of industries (and further long term impacts in that demand for air travel, when it returns, will not return to pre-virus peak). It may be the case that whoever is healthy to begin with cuts deepest, earliest will be those that survive (ala Lufthansa grounding 150 planes pretty immediately).

Inquitus

Nijmegen wrote: »

To be honest I can't see now how this isn't a global recession with a lot of job losses across a lot of industries (and further long term impacts in that demand for air travel, when it returns, will not return to pre-virus peak). It may be the case that whoever is healthy to begin with cuts deepest, earliest will be those that survive (ala Lufthansa grounding 150 planes pretty immediately).

Yep it will definitively cause a Global recession, defined as 2 quarters of negative growth, I don't see how that can be avoided at this point. It should be relatively easy to bounce back from though hopefully, once COVID-19 has blown through, as the existing fundamentals won't have changed that much, and the capacity will still be there.

Coil Kilcrea

Inquitus wrote: »

It should be relatively easy to bounce back from though hopefully, once COVID-19 has blown through, as the existing fundamentals won't have changed that much, and the capacity will still be there.

I agree that the bounce back should be speedy and significant. The problem is staying alive paying all the fixed costs and salaries with falling revenue and no forward visibility. Worse, competition will drive the already vulnerable out of business and that's not necessarily good for consumers. And I worry for all of the people employed in the industry facing lay-offs.

Tenzor07

Even if the Coronavirus disapeard tomorrow, we're still looking at an aviation landscape which will look a lot different that what we have now...

British Airways are to cut jobs, Edinburgh airport may have to close down...with the loss of 1000's of jobs..

Boeing are living on borrowed cash... I'm sure Trump will have to step in and bail them out.

Tenzor07

UK may get added to the U.S travel ban, which will ground all U.S bound flights.

The U.S may remove some Schengen area countries will low infection rates from the ban.

Coil Kilcrea

It's almost time for state intervention to offer a bail out/moratorium to the airlines in much the same way as the auto industry was saved in Detroit. This is way bigger than market dynamics or normal business adversity. It's existential and beyond the resources of even the financially strong airlines. It's essential to protect all of the jobs affected by this threat to our way of life. And I'm all for the free markets but this is beyond all of that when governments determine where they can fly.

easypazz

Coil Kilcrea wrote: »

It's almost time for state intervention to offer a bail out/moratorium to the airlines in much the same way as the auto industry was saved in Detroit. This is way bigger than market dynamics or normal business adversity. It's existential and beyond the resources of even the financially strong airlines. It's essential to protect all of the jobs affected by this threat to our way of life. And I'm all for the free markets but this is beyond all of that when governments determine where they can fly.

Support from the EU is a given. One of the biggest problems is the monkey Trump. A clown that is incapable of diplomacy.

Nijmegen

Yeah I reckon we’re headed for state bailout territories. To be honest this is so big, so global, it’s going to take a political and central bank response of 2008 if not bigger size. And look at the measures they’re bringing in already to fight the virus - overnight the US has basically just rolled out a sick pay scheme, for example, which is anathema to them.

I do think that in the short term a lot of people will lose their jobs and they will have the same forward guidance as the companies (ie, none) as they try to plan to pay their mortgages etc. Companies will be saved but god knows what’ll happen to the employees in the period in the middle. Thinking of everyone involved at this time, I really am.

The mood music from BA is really stark https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/13/ba-says-jobs-will-go-as-airline-industry-faces-crisis-worse-than-9-11-coronavirus

Coil Kilcrea

easypazz wrote: »

Support from the EU is a given. One of the biggest problems is the monkey Trump. A clown that is incapable of diplomacy.

And decency.

BanditLuke

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238751149559291906

Are flights being turned away from Spain?

TheDriver

BanditLuke wrote: »

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238751149559291906

Are flights being turned away from Spain?

Appears to be same as canaries. There's talk of rescue flights only

Nijmegen

BanditLuke wrote: »

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238751149559291906

Are flights being turned away from Spain?

Airlines making the decision themselves. Jet2 will have a lot of package holidaymakers onboard they’re on the hook for if they get shut down in situ, where other airlines obviously just get to wave goodbye to them at the jet bridge.

Noxegon

LOT has just announced a suspension of all flights.

Cookiemunster

Noxegon wrote: »

LOT has just announced a suspension of all flights.

Poland is in total lock down. No flights or trains in or out of the country. Only Polish citizens allowed to cross the border.

d51984

Spain gong in to full lockdown on Monday so theres another chunk of Irish flights that will be affected. I say next week we will start to see some frames been parked up across the country.

john boye

KLM are bringing forward the retirement date for their remaining B747s to the end of this month. You'd have to assume that BA and LH will do the same with at least some of their B744s too.

Inquitus

This is so egocentric and just wrong, what sort of people do we have out there?

Passenger Who Boarded Flight After Testing Positive for Coronavirus Gets Lifetime Ban from JetBlue
The passenger flew from New York to Florida after learning he tested positive for COVID-19

https://people.com/health/passenger-who-boarded-flight-after-testing-positive-for-coronavirus-gets-lifetime-ban-from-jetblue/

Tenzor07

Trump set to ban flights from Ireland and UK shortly...

technocrat

Reuter’s now confirming a ban on UK & IRL flights to/from USA.

Irish Steve

Ban on UK & Ireland comes into force on Monday night

d51984

This is going to hurt Aer Lingus really really bad.

Coil Kilcrea

d51984 wrote: »

This is going to hurt Aer Lingus really really bad.

Sadly, it will hurt all of us. Trump is blaming Europe‘s bad management of the crisis.

Gael23

Aer Lingus are pretty screwed now