Coronavirus will change airlines and the way we fly

I know someone who does that too, it is totally bonkers to me that she flies twice a week just to get to an office in a different country. She also told me (before the virus already) that she really doesn't need to be there, she could just as well do a conference call once a week.

Do they go in to the office twice a week or do they fly on Monday and leave on Friday? The part about not letting them be remote is confusing me.

Where do they stay when they go in to the office?

Is one of the countries Luxembourg?

Personally, I expect to walk straight to the sink and wash my hands, as soon as I get indoors, for the rest of my life.

I think it is totally futile to try to predict these things. Of course, making pronouncements as in the original post is insane, but enough people delight in this misery to put it on the front page of HN.

I’ve been thinking along these lines, but with a twist. I’m half British and half Italian, raised and resided in the latter most of my life. As I’m sure you know, both of these countries have been hit very severely by the pandemic, and Italy in particular is probably the epitome of the “hard lockdown” — or at least, it’s been one of the more prominent cases because it was the first Western country to make that move and the example everybody else seems to have drawn inspiration from. People are clearly very deeply affected on all levels by this. People have been locked indoors for, well, months now and society has become more regimented than it had ever been. Italians, a stereotypical gregarious population (though that of course varies from person to person and has some regional variation — I’m from the slightly less personally expansive North) have become accustomed to wearing masks in public and keeping strict distances from one another. ‘Touchy-feely’ has been revised to standoffish. There’s reports of people having panic attacks if they see somebody without a mask. Stuff like that (of course it’s hard to tell how prevalent that is, because broadcast & social media tend to blow such episodes out of all proportion).

And now for the twist: as chance would have it, I am working in Malta (a small independent island off the bottom of Sicily, the EU’s smallest member state), so I’m actually abroad in this crucial time and experiencing a very ‘light’ experience: 440 or so cases on a population of half a million, three or four confirmed deaths. We’ve been in a “light lockdown” since sometime in late march. People basically started working from home of their own initiative and/or businesses decided to implement this ahead of governmental recommendations to that effect; bars, restaurants, and non-essential shops are shut and those that are considered essential admit only a few people at the time. People largely give each other a wider berth and aren’t seen congregating in more than the governmentally mandated three people per cluster, but it’s all rather lax, and seems to have worked (fortunately).

So I can’t help but speculate about how odd everything will seem when I will finally go back to visit Milan: everybody back there has gone through a perspective-altering collective trauma that I haven’t experienced. I can imagine myself ending up doing something that has suddenly become a faux pas (or at the very least outmoded) such as putting forward my hand to give a shake, or something gauche such as (comparatively) ‘looming’ over somebody in a queue. I’m quite disturbed by this prospect, to be very honest. There might also be a bit of “survivor guilt” rolled in too (by a quirk of chance, I avoided the ordeal everybody else had to go through).

We’re not five months into the Twenties yet and things are definitely very different from what I had anticipated.

> The alternative is to travel by car. But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car

We routinely drive 2000 miles round trip to visit family. People can tolerate lots of time in the car if they really want to go somewhere.

That’s a good point, but I’m also starting to speculate whether, when the infection rates and (crucially) hospital occupation rates diminish, we will see some people deliberately seeking to get infected so as to gain immunity whilst the risks are low, specifically, when they can be reasonably certain that if they experience severe symptoms they’ll have a place in an ICU to receive intensive care. This might sound unsound (pardon the awkward phrasing) but it’s not necessarily irrational given the perceived advantages of immunity and the diminished perceived risks. It might not even be socially undesirable either, as a kind of “low burn” through the population, or at least it’s sturdier members, might be seen as building up that “herd immunity” which makes it difficult for the virus to reach the higher-risk individuals.

>I have a hunch that once the severity of the pandemic eases, we may see an increase in car journeys for holidays, particularly for continental Europe. >But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car and so this may affect where people travel.

As an American, I would routinely drive 3+ hours to visit family in the same state, or 6+ hours across several states from my childhood home to university. Growing up in the Midwest, I got used to measuring distance in hours of highway travel time. I wouldn't make those trips every week or every month, but 5-6 times in a year would not have been unusual. I know many people who drove cross-country when moving from East to West Coast (a multi-day road trip), or vice-versa. Road trips in general are firmly rooted in the American experience, as captured in films such as 'National Lampoon's Vacation' or 'Little Miss Sunshine.'

Perhaps post-pandemic Europe will see its own road trip renaissance, complete with motels, minivans, and roadside attractions?

Any increase in price leads to some people deciding to skip the flight entirely. You might only need to raise prices by 30% percent or so to have a half-empty plane, if your customers are highly price-sensitive.

I would probably take fewer short holiday trips during the year - switch to 1-2 long holidays instead of 6-7 weekend trips. That way the cost of flying takes up a lower percentage of the overall holiday budget.

If people get used to higher prices, I also expect airlines to try and maintain them even after the seating restrictions are lifted, same as adding carry-on bag fees but not lowering the base price to compensate.

American tried this a few years ago with "more legroom throughout coach" back in 2005-ish and it nearly bankrupted them. People flatly and absolutely refuse to pay more than the bare minimum to fly places. This will not change once the pandemic panic dies down.

I'd pay a bit more for transcontinental flying but, like, I'm very much in the minority and I fly enough to get free upgrades most of the time anyways.

If I wanted to pay ~double for a more comfortable flight, I'd be flying first class everywhere.

> I wish they would simply remove every second seat and charge twice the price

Will that help with the virus? It is less than six feet and you will be with that person for hours or so.

You can already purchase two seats today to achieve this result if you wanted to.