Covid-19; Impact on the aviation industry

dodzy

Locker10a wrote: »

I think it will pass in a few months and be forgotten about by mid summer

I remember reading this post just over 8 weeks ago thinking to myself "I hope Locker is right. Fingers crossed". :eek:

pm.

Tenger wrote: »

No way to give you a solid answer. EI may not know themselves.
I would expect their TA schedule to increase from the current 3 routes in July.
But I can’t see a “full schedule” in place by Aug 1st.
SFO was a busier route than LAX so I’m going to guess that it returns before LA?

Thanks Tenger, it is crystal ball stuff alright. I will keep an eye on it and possibly rebook for next year

Davidth88

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-52539141


Running on the BBC news every 30 mins right now

NIMAN

Davidth88 wrote: »

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-52539141


Running on the BBC news every 30 mins right now

That makes Aer Lingus look very bad.

Nijmegen

I think Aer Lingus scored a particularly egregious own goal there - Obviously loads have been low and the no show rate on even highly booked flights has been high, but someone just decided to assume that would occur every flight, every day and no need to make changes to the IT systems.

I see the the social media backlash against the passengers, but at the end of the day it's down to the airline to limit the seats that can be sold and checked in on a flight. We don't know the reasons why all these people had to travel and can judge them individually if we like, but it's down to airlines to block seats and enforce distancing through the number they sell and how they manage check in.

sparrowcar

I can't understand how someone didn't question it and stop it. The checkin supervisor, captain, duty manager or even cabin crew.

Makes you wonder what discussion if any have been had at higher levels in EI. Would look like senior EI management left their front line staff exposed here without direction.

devnull

Had to laugh at this quote, which seems to be a laughably bad attempt at deflection, almost stating that they had no way of knowing in advance how many passengers were on a flight.

In light of the unexpectedly high loads on the Belfast – London Heathrow service this morning

As another poster has said, maybe we give them a free pass, on allowing many bookings over and above what could be accommodated by social distancing measures because of the high no show rate, even though that's quite generous as there should be some cap even if it's higher then the overall social distancing capacity, but lower than the overall capacity.

However this is no excuse for allowing that many passengers onto the flight. this could have been spotted both by checked in numbers before the flight and also by those staff who were boarding passengers, or by the crew who were on board the plane.

Either there were numerous attempts points at which this issue could have been prevented by implementing operational procedures to stop them that were missed, or simply it's a case of there not being any operating procedures to prevent this at all. Either way, it doesn't look good for AL.

IngazZagni

It's no different than Ryanair knowingly bringing the 187 Keelings workers over on a single flight.

The question needs to be asked in what would an acceptable load factor be? Airlines would often only make a profit with a load factor of over 70% so if they are limited to this then they won't make money at all. There won't be any flights if this is forced upon the airlines.

Nijmegen

If I put on my "dealing with corporate IT" hat, I'd put a wager on a discussion about capping bookings or limiting seat selection having been had and the system being hard coded in some way to make it difficult to implement a dynamic change. The only other explanation is that nobody thought of it at all as being a potential problem or just dismissed it out of hand, which is sheer stupidity. If it's the former IT explanation, it's still not an excuse - this has been ongoing long enough to get a solution.

I did read in an article on Skift about Sun Airlines that they're seeing very different booking patterns, with lots of last minute (within 2 days) bookings. So I can well imagine they suddenly got a lot of bookings but to be honest the scenario of a well booked flight is not so unimaginable that you couldn't have taken steps in the system to prevent it.

Then, as ye say, taking steps with the many humans involved in the middle actually dispatching the flight.

Mc Love

Apparently that video on the BBC was an old photo.

Chris_5339762

Lets not forget that Dublin - London is actually a DOMESTIC flight not an international one, by all the officialdom, anyway. Yes, there are probably a lot of people that don't need to be flying, but someone in AL should have seen "hang on this flight looks fuller than the others, lets do something".

MJohnston

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

Lets not forget that Dublin - London is actually a DOMESTIC flight not an international one, by all the officialdom, anyway. Yes, there are probably a lot of people that don't need to be flying, but someone in AL should have seen "hang on this flight looks fuller than the others, lets do something".

It was Belfast, not Dublin

trellheim

if "number checked in >50%" THEN GET_ANOTHER_320

not a difficult metric to monitor in ops to be fair

goingnowhere

EI doesn't exactly have crew and aircraft sitting in LHR.

On one level who are all these people and where are they going?? But with the UK reopening (too soon) this trend will continue.

EI has had 50% checked in and no one show up in the past. If the trend continues then clearly there is a need for extra flights. EI would likely be able to make a profit even at 50% load, with LHR empty they are burning a lot less fuel holding than previously so costs are down.

BA has suspended ops to Belfast so EI has taken those passengers and presumably also the UK post contract and BA's cargo. EI also held (hold?) the UK civil service transport contract.

trellheim

EI doesn't exactly have crew and aircraft sitting in LHR.

I get that, but it does in DUB .

Now before anyone jumps down my throat re costs and so on, yes I get it. the whole point is that someone should have weighed up the bad press(and possible health risks) vs a second 320 .

Maybe they did , but EI twitter were nowhere to be seen so looks unplanned and caught on the hop

addaword

MJohnston wrote: »

MOL has a job for life as a CEO, sportspeople often have a very small window to earn enough to do then for their entire lives. I still think Premier League wages are massively inflated, but it’s not like for like.

Michael O'L. has not a job for life. He does a bad job and he is out, like the CEO of many airlines.
Mol is a great man, he has created thousands of jobs and brought cheap travel to millions.
Premier league footballers can go sing.

john boye

EI will obviously take the flack for this but I wonder if whoever took the pic to complain appreciates the irony of them complaining about overcrowding which they're very much adding to.

Out of interest, are any Dublin routes which are still running doing these kind of numbers?

hetuzozaho

john boye wrote: »

EI will obviously take the flack for this but I wonder if whoever took the pic to complain appreciates the irony of them complaining about overcrowding which they're very much adding to.

Personally if I was travelling I would have expected the airline to manage it, my local coffee shop even has it!

W1ll1s

Airlines often say there is no profit without a 70% load, so there won't be flights anywhere... if that is the case?

MJohnston

addaword wrote: »

Michael O'L. has not a job for life. He does a bad job and he is out, like the CEO of many airlines.
Mol is a great man, he has created thousands of jobs and brought cheap travel to millions.
Premier league footballers can go sing.

I mean, look your first statement is patently false - he's made several major ****ups as the CEO of Ryanair, and all that happened was him waiving his bonus. Let's put that aside.

He's paid not just in salary, but in massive amounts of stock, meaning he'll always make money from Ryanair, as long as Ryanair makes money. Let's put that aside too though.

If something happened to get him fired, somehow, he'd absolutely waltz into some other cushy business job. Unless CEOs get imprisoned for something, they're practically guaranteed to land on their feet. The man who sank Lehman Brothers, and arguably caused the 2008 global recession, is still gainfully employed and on several corporate boards.

I have no idea why this was compared to sportspeople, it's just a massively uneven comparison.

john boye

hetuzozaho wrote: »

Personally if I was travelling I would have expected the airline to manage it, my local coffee shop even has it!

I'm not excusing the airline in any way but I think we all have a responsibility atm and I was just a bit surprised to see those kind of numbers on a flight.

Growler!!!

W1ll1s wrote: »

Airlines often say there is no profit without a 70% load, so there won't be flights anywhere... if that is the case?

If the airlines can't get a high load factor then they will increase prices to where it becomes profitable with a lower load factor. Thats called Yield management.

Nijmegen

john boye wrote: »

I'm not excusing the airline in any way but I think we all have a responsibility atm and I was just a bit surprised to see those kind of numbers on a flight.

But that's not your fault as a passenger. We (a) don't know why these people were flying and so can't judge them effectively without speculation, and (b) in all other sectors opening up the onus is being very clearly put on the business to control social distancing.

In this case, the individuals travelling might have had a very good reason to and might have equally expected that EI would control its bookings and seat distribution and aircraft positioning (if a 2nd A320 was the solution) appropriately. All of these things are out of the control of the person booking a flight or in another context showing up for a coffee out of a window and so on.

EI's "we didn't expect this" is extremely, extremely, extremely weak given that a flight involves both booking and checking in in advance as well as physically going through security and arriving at a gate to be put on the plane, that has a manifest of everyone and where they're sitting. There's so many control points it's really laughably poor to be saying "Err, caught us by surprise didn't it!"

easypazz

trellheim wrote: »

if "number checked in >50%" THEN GET_ANOTHER_320

not a difficult metric to monitor in ops to be fair

There is either a rule that applies to all airlines or there isn't.

trellheim

I never said it was a rule, rather an ops metric. The result was definite bad press, to say nothing of the possible other downsides.

For example, to show some blue water here, Eurostar trains are now requiring masks to be worn on their fleet as of yesterday.

PinOnTheRight

Virgin Atlantic have announced plans to cut over 3000 jobs, around a third of its workforce and end its LGW operation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52542038

Nijmegen

Ryanair traffic fell 99.6% in April vs last year. https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/ryanair/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=901&newsid=1389594

smurfjed

rather an ops metric.

Is there any scientific proof that an aircraft with a 50% load factor is any safer than one with 100% considering the boarding and deplaning process, inflight behaviour and seat locations?

Nijmegen

smurfjed wrote: »

Is there any scientific proof that an aircraft with a 50% load factor is any safer than one with 100% considering the boarding and deplaning process, inflight behaviour and seat locations?

I doubt there's much irrevocably proven with regards to Covid and air travel, but if we operated only on what we know for sure we'd allow no flights.

The principal of social distancing where possible is an effective one generally in other settings. So on a packed flight you will regularly touch the person in the seat beside you you're so close. On a 66% loaded flight with middle seats reserved, sure they could sneeze on you but there's a lot more distance. On a 33% loaded flight, you don't even need to risk touching as someone passes for the toilet. On the face of it, that gives the virus fewer chances.

As you say, air travel introduces these points of contact that no matter what will increase your risk - eg passing others on the way to the bathroom, let alone whether or not the bathroom has been properly sanitised by a potential carrier.

I think the onus is on public health officials and air travel businesses to try and reduce the risk as much as possible whilst people travelling will accept their increased risk. Just because you can't reduce the risk to the same level as folks walking past one another outside doesn't mean you shouldn't take any steps to try protect people.

That's where you can change some actions to try reduce risk - for example, could you literally board by row (eg from the middle of the plane where boarding front and back, or from the back row when boarding from the front) and tell gate lice to stay the heck away from the boarding area until called. Enforce strict deplaning procedure along the same lines - cabin crew calls out your row, you're allowed stand, get your bag and leave.

Slow? Sure. But we live in a new world now where a virus is killing lots of people at pace, so be it.

If they do prove that antibodies are working, maybe you have antibody+ and antibody- flights on high frequency routes.

I also think there's a confidence piece in the supply/demand equation for airlines. I think demand will not come back as quick if they're packing people into regular load factor planes.

Aint Eazy Being Cheezy

How much notice are airline’s giving fir cancelled flights?