Covid-19; Impact on the aviation industry

PommieBast

L1011 wrote: »

Still suggests that if I do get in to the batch I expect to I might actually get to do the trip I have scheduled for the end of June - I wait in hope!

Problem now is the negative PCT test requirement, which from the list prices I have seen so far is best part of €200. Unless something is done about this price-gouging it is yet another hammer blow for aviation.

donkey balls

PommieBast wrote: »

Problem now is the negative PCT test requirement, which from the list prices I have seen so far is best part of €200. Unless something is done about this price-gouging it is yet another hammer blow for aviation.

There is a company charging €50 a mate had to get tested same day result in the Industrial estate that DHL are based.

naughtysmurf

donkey balls wrote: »

Lads that cover operations within the facility at the weekend are hoping to go on holidays in July I reckon they be lucky to get away.

Why?

If enough people have the confidence to book flights, the flights will go. There were flights from Ireland to the Canaries last month, The Canaries for example have be vaccinating since December 27, they will be open for business

Vaccinated or not you’ll maybe still need a pre flight test as there afaik is still a question mark over whether or not you can still transmit the virus after vaccination, the vaccine only limits the negative effects of the illness to you, you can still get & possibly transmit, that’s how I understand it anyway. I’d be hopeful that consumer confidence will grow was regards leisure travel over the next few months maybe led by the active older generation that have been vaccinated & the rest will follow

PommieBast

donkey balls wrote: »

There is a company charging €50 a mate had to get tested same day result in the Industrial estate that DHL are based.

Where they located? Would they be able to turn around a sample from London within 72 hours?

Part of the problem is typical of the Irish government they have dumped this requirement on passengers without much notice or information. PCT seems to be by far the most expensive of all the available tests.

Tenger

PommieBast wrote: »

Where they located? Would they be able to turn around a sample from London within 72 hours?

Part of the problem is typical of the Irish government they have dumped this requirement on passengers without much notice or information. PCT seems to be by far the most expensive of tests.

I doubt any test centre will accept a sample that they didn't take themselves.
I think the private PCR tests get results within 48 hours. (Randox at the airport certainly does)

This rule wasn't "dumped without much notice" There have been calls for the requirement for months.

PCR is more expensive because its a more thorough test than antigen testing.

Candamir

PCR is more expensive because it has to go to an expensive lab via an expensive courier, has to run on expensive machines for many hours, and it all has to be done by expensive technicians.

It also doesn’t work very well for the purpose of getting people travelling.
Anyone who’s had COVID is likely to test positive by PCR for quite some time. The HSE recommend not retesting anyone for at least 12 weeks for that reason. So getting COVID could leave you grounded for at least 3 months if airlines/countries insist on seeing negative PCR reports.

That’s why Antigen tests are better. They are only positive for people who are actively infected.

EchoIndia

Candamir wrote: »

That’s why Antigen tests are better. They are only positive for people who are actively infected.

Antigen tests are much less reliable than PCR and are only recommended for use in certain situations - and that doesn't include travel.

LuasSimon

What’s people’s opinion on When will people be able to go on holidays to Spain etc ?
July , August this summer it will it be next year?

I have Ryanair vouchers from last summer and due to have holidays end of July , not sure to book new flights for this July or just get money back

EchoIndia

EchoIndia wrote: »

Antigen tests are much less reliable than PCR and are only recommended for use in certain situations - and that doesn't include travel.

That is not correct. antigen is accepted elsewhere; https://www.thelocal.de/20210107/explained-germanys-new-two-test-strategy-for-travellers-from-foreign-risk-zones. Their specificity and sensitivity is very good although not as good as a PCR test. They are a very effective way of testing for infection and when fighting a pandemic inexpensive tests which deliver results quickly are a vital tool which is not being used at present.

Now getting back on topic in line with moderation direction my flights to Ireland have been cancelled. I have the option to switch them for free for another flight within 2 weeks of the departure date but as Ryanair have cancelled flights for the best part of two months I can't avail of that offer. I will contact Customer Support on Chat when available to see what they will offer because simply changing online requires a 70 euro change fee in addition to higher ticket prices.

PommieBast

Tenger wrote: »

I doubt any test centre will accept a sample that they didn't take themselves.

There seems to be some mail-in testing services in the UK, but that leads on to the question of whether the certification they provide is acceptable to Irish immigration. I've no doubt that there will be fraud in the system if there isn't already

Candamir wrote: »

PCR is more expensive because it has to go to an expensive lab via an expensive courier, has to run on expensive machines for many hours, and it all has to be done by expensive technicians.

Certainly is not cheap, but I have seen some blatant mark-ups such as charging extra for the certification. Heathrow mentions £80 but I have seen prices elsewhere as high as £180.



I've heard some noises about the accuracy of PCR tests but it is what TPTB have specified.

Candamir

:mad:

EchoIndia wrote: »

Antigen tests are much less reliable than PCR and are only recommended for use in certain situations - and that doesn't include travel.

Not true.
Antigen tests are accepted by many countries for travel, and ECDC include antigen testing on the same level as PCR for diagnosis of COVID. Antigen tests pick up 97-98% of cases (compared to PCR) of COVID with culturable virus and viral loads considered to be contagious. What they won’t do is continue to be positive 12 weeks after recovery (the HSE cites their own cases 19 weeks after recovery). How do these people get back to work/leisure travel if we are only using PCR?
Yes, PCR is more sensitive, but that sensitivity is a double edged sword.
The HSE are beginning studies on antigen tests. By the time they get them done and reported we’ll have missed months of opportunity. Not just in travel, but in public health. There are good quality studies out there already to back antigen testing as one prong of an overall health strategy.

basill

15m will be vaccinated in the UK by mid February accordkng to Sky news. In Ireland we are still at the risk assessment committee stage.

MrMusician18

basill wrote: »

15m will be vaccinated in the UK by mid February accordkng to Sky news. In Ireland we are still at the risk assessment committee stage.

We've already started vaccinating.

bikeman1

What many seem to forget is that, we had extremely low amounts of Covid in Europe in June, July and August last Summer. You were allowed to freely travel in and out of most countries with no mandatory restrictions or testing.

I would suspect that post winter and back into nice summer weather, with a vaccine taking hold, that many countries will return to a green status and travel in and out without the requirement for an expensive PCR testing.

Also, don’t forget, the EU spent huge money on trying to save the European tourist season in 2020. Tourism is the biggest lifeline and support to huge swathes of the EU economy. The same will happen this year.

While many of us like to book months in advance and dream of their upcoming holiday, the uncertainty with Covid, this can’t be done. Especially with the most vulnerable in Europe fully vaccinated by the end of May.

Get those swimming shorts ready!

Blut2

L1011 wrote: »

The original rollout schedule was based on 25k/week at this stage based on expected Pfizer deliveries. We're actually getting 42k/week between more deliveries and a change in needle handling to get 6 shots from a vial rather than 5.

Even if Moderna only adds 10k/week to that, we'll be quite ahead of the original rollout quite soon. Local nursing home was scheduled for the 28th and is getting it Monday 11th instead.

However, the later stages of the rollout were planned for much higher doses, which we're still expecting to get; so the acceleration now might only buy a week or two. Still suggests that if I do get in to the batch I expect to I might actually get to do the trip I have scheduled for the end of June - I wait in hope!

Thats unfortunately not accurate. The original plan was for 250k/month vaccinations. This was later downwards revised to 25k a week, and now back "up" to 40k a week. Its all optics management to try and distract from the fact that we're actually behind schedule already. This was the original timeline in December:



Note the nursing homes were due to be finished by around January 5th - whereas now its by "the end of the month".



According to an article in the Sunday Times today "by January 10th Ireland will have vaccinated only 35,000 people, despite having received 81,000 vaccines, due to a shortage of vaccinators." -- so the problem would seem to be with the administration/management rather than getting the vaccines themselves.

If you're a healthy under 55 year old the vaccination was only originally scheduled to get to you sometime mid-July->mid-October, including big bumps in supply for all the different vaccines, and a smooth roll out. Given we're already a few weeks behind schedule I would assume this will actually look more like September->December.

But in saying that what bikeman1 is likely correct. Regardless of where (or how slow) Ireland is in its vaccination program Europe will be open for tourism this summer. Theres no way heavily tourism dependent economies like Croatia or Greece, which opened for tourism last summer despite the risks, will stay closed past May when they'll have a huge % of their at-risk population vaccinated by then.

donkey balls

Regarding the roll out of the vaccine they could use the likes of the DFB NAS etc or is it the case they don't have enough vaccines to do more than the current numbers.

Marcusm

donkey balls wrote: »

Regarding the roll out of the vaccine they could use the likes of the DFB NAS etc or is it the case they don't have enough vaccines to do more than the current numbers.

Realistically, I don't see them rolling out vaccine for supply by NAS, pharmacists etc until they are using the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, ie, the one which does not have a complex cold chain.

Cookiemunster

Blut2 wrote: »

Thats unfortunately not accurate. The original plan was for 250k/month vaccinations. This was later downwards revised to 25k a week, and now back "up" to 40k a week. Its all optics management to try and distract from the fact that we're actually behind schedule already. This was the original timeline in December:



Note the nursing homes were due to be finished by around January 5th - whereas now its by "the end of the month".



According to an article in the Sunday Times today "by January 10th Ireland will have vaccinated only 35,000 people, despite having received 81,000 vaccines, due to a shortage of vaccinators." -- so the problem would seem to be with the administration/management rather than getting the vaccines themselves.

If you're a healthy under 55 year old the vaccination was only originally scheduled to get to you sometime mid-July->mid-October, including big bumps in supply for all the different vaccines, and a smooth roll out. Given we're already a few weeks behind schedule I would assume this will actually look more like September->December.

But in saying that what bikeman1 is likely correct. Regardless of where (or how slow) Ireland is in its vaccination program Europe will be open for tourism this summer. Theres no way heavily tourism dependent economies like Croatia or Greece, which opened for tourism last summer despite the risks, will stay closed past May when they'll have a huge % of their at-risk population vaccinated by then.

I'm not sure where you're getting those figures from. Vaccination numbers always depended on the EMA clearing each vaccine and the amounts that the manufacturers could provide. I've seen nobody from the government/NPHET ever mention 250k a week from week 1 and that was never going to be possible.

And did you look at the source of that chart you posted? Estimated on census, HSE and media reports? That's a long way from the official line.

The EMA hadn't even given approval for the Pfizer vaccine when that was published.

Blut2

There was a timeline drawn up within the HSE in early-December, which corresponds with that chart. I can't post that directly unfortunately. But more verifiably that chart is from the Sunday Business Post, who made it based on their own government sources. Its a very reliable paper, not a tabloid - they don't post idle speculation as fact. Its a safe bet their published information is far more reliable than any claims or assessments either you or I can make.

The priority group size in the chart is all thats been estimated from census, HSE and media reports - not the overall timeline. I think you may have rather misinterpreted that.

NH2013

Yes but don't forget that the timelines are improving each week with new announcements. As recently as this week another batch of Pfizer vaccines were ordered to be delivered in Q2, which should speed things up further and last week AstraZeneca announced they had increased manufacturing capability again further, so they too can be assumed to come on-stream sooner as well. As each week passes and the processes get bedded in, the timeline seems to be brought further and further forward.

It seems to have been a case of under-promise and over-deliver on the part of the vaccine manufacturers. With that in mind I'd be optimistic that by the end of May we'll have made a decent chunk into the "All other 18-54 year olds" group and this will have been more than enough to remove most if not all restrictions, certainly come July/August I get the sense we'll be back to near total normality based on the increases being announced on the vaccine manufacturing front.

We also of course have the Jennson/J&J vaccine yet to be announced and approved which should be a single shot vaccine and not a two shot one which will speed things up again further hopefully.

All in all I'd imagine the aviation industry should be at a solid 60-70% of the 2019 operation levels by August/September of this year with that in mind.

The requirements for a PCR test I'd imagine will be replaced with either a PCR test or Vaccine cert once the data comes back on reduced transmission from those vaccinated which should be out in the next 6-8 weeks or so.

Blut2

I would be extremely skeptical than most Irish 18-54 year olds are vaccinated by May. Thats 5 months ahead of the above timeline - which had us vaccinating 250k/month. We'd need to be doing 900k vaccinations a month, starting already from January 1st (!), to achieve that. And for reference we're now only aiming to do 160k/mo for January & February...

That timeline does take account of the new vaccines becoming available already also, unfortunately - hence the projection that we'll be doing 500k vaccinations a month from May. So we're very very unlikely to see things moving faster than that. That timeline is, if anything, a best case scenario - given the delays already announced so far.

But it shouldn't make much of a difference either way from an aviation context. Last summer showed us if Greece, Croatia, Italy etc are open to tourism - people will fly. Domestic EU loads were, while not great, not too awful last July & August, even when 0% of the population was vaccinated. If the most at risk 20%+ of the population has been vaccinated across Europe by then its hard to see it being anything but better this year.

marno21

The above timeline is extremely out of kilter with the planned approvals by the EMA.

250k a month in January is overestimating. Brian MacCraith said on Morning Island a few weeks back that they anticipate 530k deliveries per week in the height of summer. That's 2.1m doses per month, depending on how many of those are Janssen that will be enough to vaccinate 1m+ per month. If a significant amount are Janssen it'll mean 1.2/1.3m per month.

That bodes well with a critical mass of people vaccinated by mid/end of summer.

If the vulnerable are vaccinate by mid Q2 or so assuming approval of AstraZeneca in late Jan/early Feb and Janssen in Feb/March, the case for restrictions will be very difficult. Remember that with vaccines there will still be Covid-19 spreading, it'll cause hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths, just as with influenza and other seasonal respiratory illnesses. We just have to hope the vaccines do as good a job as possible.

By mid 2021, restrictions by and large will have to be lifted as the fiscal cost of restrictions can't be borne by the country (and other western countries) long term. Once the majority (esp. the vulnerable) are vaccinated the cost:benefit of the restrictions will see them lifted either way.

Blut2

The issue is regardless of the number of vaccinations we get delivered we also have to actually physically vaccinate the population. To quote that article from the Sunday Times again - "by January 10th Ireland will have vaccinated only 35,000 people, despite having received 81,000 vaccines" - so even at current very low levels of delivery we're not keeping up. I would have massive doubts that we'll be able to scale up from 160k/mo vaccinations a month done to 1million/month within 5 months, given how badly run the HSE is. Exhibit 'A' is our currently not-fit-for purpose/failing test & trace system, 10 months into the pandemic...

I do agree that restrictions should be lifted most places by summer regardless of that mind you. With the most vulnerable 20% vaccinated hospitals should no longer be under any pressure, so the logic for them will be gone. So we should see a good degree of normal life resume, particularly in aviation/travel hopefully.

edit: this is useful to illustrate the above thought, from the Sunday Business Post again. It definitely bodes well for this summer being mostly normal for travel. It shows we only need to have vaccinated approx 11% of our population (just over 500k) to reduce deaths by 85%, and to vaccinate 19% to reduce deaths by 99%:

bk

One of the issues currently being faced, is the healthcare system being smashed by the current massive surge in Covid patients. In the past week we have significantly more Covid cases then even the US/UK (per capita obviously)!

The likes of NAS/DFB, etc. are too busy rushing critical patients between hospitals and queued up outside hospitals to be helping rollout vaccine.

Same with Doctors, nurses and even local GP's are getting slammed helping Covid patients. Plus swabbers are overwhelmed at the moment too.

Unfortunately as a result, this is likely to greatly slow down vaccine rollout, as so many of the frontline health staff with the skills to vaccinate are too busy or even out with Covid themselves.

We really need to get the current surge under control and the numbers way down, so that healthcare workers can be re-assigned to assisting with vaccine rollout.

BTW separately about the J&J vaccine only needing one shot. They are actually two arms to their trial, a single shot arm and a double shot arm. Hopefully the single shot will prove good enough, but it might not be and double shot required instead. We obviously don't know yet, but there is a lot of speculation that the single shot might not be good enough.

bk

Blut2 wrote: »

"by January 10th Ireland will have vaccinated only 35,000 people, despite having received 81,000 vaccines" - so even at current very low levels of delivery we're not keeping up.

Keep in mind that the Pfizer vaccine is a double shot vaccine, so they have to keep the second dose in storage for the second shot three weeks later.

So the above 81,000 doses is really to be read as 40,500 people. They have given the first dose to 35,000 of these 40,500 people. Still a bit off, but not as bad as it might first seem.

Kcormahs

Easyjet just got a $1.87bn loan in the UK with government backup support a few weeks after BA (exclusive for BA, not IAG) getting £2bn from the same. Just another one to add to the list with Lufhtansa group, Air France/Klm Alitalia TAP Finnair, all the US3 and so on, when at the same time Aer Lingus won’t be able to access any of these funds/loans as no such scheme exists in Ireland. All these bailouts and facilities will put Aer Lingus in disadvantage against its European/long haul competitors.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2021/0111/1188863-easyjet-funding/

I don't see a 1,87bn loan as a good thing.
Easyjet are not surviving this pandemic as well as Wizz or Ryanair or the IAG group.
They've been getting credit which has to be paid back and doing sale/leasebacks.
They aren't exactly able to make big margins in the LCC area to service all that debt.
Wishing that Aer Lingus follow them down that path is not wishing them well.

Tenzor07

I'm sure Ryanair will be up in arms over this, but not sure if they can do much now as Britain are out of the EU?

Kcormahs

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't see a 1,87bn loan as a good thing.
Easyjet are not surviving this pandemic as well as Wizz or Ryanair or the IAG group.
They've been getting credit which has to be paid back and doing sale/leasebacks.
They aren't exactly able to make big margins in the LCC area to service all that debt.
Wishing that Aer Lingus follow them down that path is not wishing them well.

British Airways got a bigger loan and its part of IAG

the bigger picture is Aer Lingus doesnt have this facility even if needed right now, which is very worrying as things dont seem to be improving. the Irish government support for the aviation as been close to none compared to other European and Uk governments

goingnowhere

Kcormahs wrote: »

Easyjet just got a $1.87bn loan in the UK with government backup support a few weeks after BA (exclusive for BA, not IAG) getting £2bn from the same. Just another one to add to the list with Lufhtansa group, Air France/Klm Alitalia TAP Finnair, all the US3 and so on, when at the same time Aer Lingus won’t be able to access any of these funds/loans as no such scheme exists in Ireland. All these bailouts and facilities will put Aer Lingus in disadvantage against its European/long haul competitors.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2021/0111/1188863-easyjet-funding/

The last thing you want is a government loan or them taking equity. Ryanair and Aer Lingus are amongst the best managed European airlines, free of government influence and have addressed legacy cost base issues (yup we are on Ryanair Mk2) so if they can hold on without getting tied down with government deals they will be laughing on the far side as UK, French, German government will try to block management at BA/AF/LH from taking the steps (mass redundancies and government shareholdings don't mix) needed to operate commercially in the new normal while carrying a massive debt.

Bail out the DAA so everyone gets massive discounts on airport changes, parking charges etc. EI and FR are 90%+ of Dublin and Cork business they get the value