Aproximando-se da meia-noite na aviação: quem vai se transformar em uma abóbora?

Second issue, health and sanitation issues are not temporary. Internationally, from an operational point of view, it’s going to mean the continuing hiccup effect as governments protect their borders from new infection, opening and closing, opening and closing. It’ll cause airlines across the board health and sanitation issues will incur higher operating costs. Airports too have been relatively slow to adapt, perhaps because of the lower numbers flying through their real estate. They’re going to need to adapt very expensively to conform with future health needs because this is going to be something that goes on right through this decade and beyond. And standardized testing and recognition of vaccinations, which is at the heart of a lot of these issues, will be challenging for many years.

Thirdly, and this one is really complex and hard to see a way through, but the entire foundation of competition regulation has been undermined. That’s happened because of government support for airlines. It’s been so widespread that, in fact, subsidy will drive much of the near future growth and even medium term growth, especially in international markets. This creates fundamental issues around competition and raises the real prospect of the regrowth of protectionism.

Fourthly, as yield profiles slump, and I’ve talked appliedly about this previously, low costs are going to be even more vital for airlines. With a lower yield profile, you cannot afford to have high costs. As a result, across the world, almost without exception in international and domestic markets, LCCs have expanded their market shares over the last year. So full service carriers, in some way or another, are going to have to reinvent themselves, but particularly by reducing costs because losing business travelers means fewer trunk routes, fewer long haul services and fewer airlines, higher prices for long haul international travel.

Talked about reducing airline revenues this year by 50 or maybe even 60%. That has to be transformational for the industry, and it can mean any or all of the following: a much smaller industry, which seems almost inevitable. Fewer or smaller airlines or both, which does have major implications, of course, for creditors and shareholders among others, not to mention the tourism industry, which is right at the tail at the end of this dog. Bankruptcies for airlines or slow painful decline as debt burdens weigh heavily. And short haul, where most of the future growth will come from, becomes much more competitive because everybody’s going to be diving in there, particularly with some of the new model, very fuel efficient aircraft that are coming into the market now.

Sixth point, international travel is going to remain problematic. Uncoordinated national responses and what I’ve called the hiccup effect of sudden opening and closing makes network planning very difficult  and costly. The long haul trunk routes suffering from reduced business travel revenues will have reduced frequencies and fewer airlines. They will often be subsidized. Then higher fares for leisure travelers are sadly a likely outcome of that process. And not to overlook perhaps in the course of the decade the most important of all, environmental sustainability. I’ve talked about this before, but pressures will intensify to reduce emissions. This comes with costs and revenue losses, significant, and it’s not going to go away.

So, in closing, just to reiterate, I want to stress that it seems to me that many airlines either don’t recognize or don’t wish to recognize the future industry will not look the same again. It’ll be very different than the one we knew. These next few months are going to be critical in showing us what that shape will be.

#reconstruindoviagens