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Normal air travel during the pre-Covid-19 pandemic
When will air travel return to “normal”?
A friend recently informed me that she flew in from Vancouver with rather poor passenger load. I can only assume that it was probably due to fear of Covid-19 infections that had kept many travelers away.
Two studies by Centre for Decease Control (CDC) have added to concerns over the risk of COVID-19 infections during long-haul flights. These 2 were conducted on long distance flights; one from Hanoi to London and the other was from Boston to Hong Kong.
While most travel experts believe that it is safe to travel, they are uncertain about the airlines’ recovery. A survey was carried out by the world’s most trusted sources of market intelligence (Collinson with CAPA) shows 31% of respondents expect air travel to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2023 followed by 2024 at 25%.
Two days ago, Boeing announced it expected that global aviation to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024 but long-haul international routes would take longer to recover.
Leisure and shorter-haul travel more likely to recover sooner.
Leisure travel would recover faster than business travel while shorter-haul flights will make a faster comeback.
To those who longed to fly to your holiday destinations on long haul flights, you may have to wait a little longer. In view of the closure of many international borders, travel bubbles have been created to cater for this. The one between Singapore and Hong Kong planned in August 2021 was cancelled due to the differences in the anti-epidemic strategies currently adopted by the two countries.
However, effective 7th September 2021, travelers who are fully vaccinated in Singapore and Germany can now travel between the two countries quarantine-free.
In Malaysia, the first domestic tourism bubble started yesterday between Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi. This enables passengers to fly after Covid-19 screening tests and without the need for quarantine on the other end. This pilot project with 1520 passengers on 8 flights was a good start to the local air travel recovery.
Conclusion
Air travel may return to normalcy earlier if only the touted herd immunity is achievable.
What is herd immunity?
Well, it is the indirect protection of infection when the population becomes immune either through vaccinations or immunity developed through previous infections.
Now experts say herd immunity is no longer possible because vaccinations are not fully effective, especially with the Delta variant and there have been reports of people infected with COVID-19 for a second time.
As such, the wait to full normalcy may take even longer. Eurocontrol, an air traffic management agency in Brussel is more pessimistic. It stated that Europe’s air traffic might not get back to normal until 2029.
However, my take is that the recovery of air travel to pre-pandemic levels is likely to be around 2024.
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Boeing says air travel to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2024