The Covid-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on the travel industry. There have been small improvements since April, which some analysts have touted as signs of recovery. But any recovery has been in many ways inconsequential so far.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Travel is one-third of what it used to be.
TSA data show that nearly two-thirds fewer people were screened on the last Tuesday of October this year than on the corresponding Tuesday last year. On Halloween, TSA screened 618,476 people. In 2019, on the same day of the week, more than 1.8 million were screened. TSA screenings topped 1 million on Oct. 18, which prompted headlines that this was a sign of “rebounding travel,” but even then, passenger flow was down 60% from the corresponding day a year ago. The bottom line: Travel is one-third of what it used to be.
2. China helped improve world-wide airline capacity.
World-wide airline capacity was 58% lower in October than the same month last year, measured in available seat-miles, according to Cirium, an aviation data company. A seat-mile is one seat flown one mile. For comparison, in April, the world-wide capacity decline was 73%. But recovery is uneven. While China, October airline capacity was down only 35%, Asia overall was down 55%. Europe was lacking two-thirds of its air capacity of the previous year and the U.S. lacked 61%. Capacity to the Caribbean, meanwhile, was only down 50% compared with the previous year.
3. Flights may not be as frequent or cheap for leisure travelers in the future.
The airline industry depends on high-fare, frequent-flying business travelers to pay the bills. But, for the week ending Nov. 1, the number of tickets travel agencies sold to corporate customers was 85.3% lower than a year earlier, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which processes airline tickets. Without these clients, business plans have to change: Flights ultimately may not be as frequent or cheap for leisure travelers. Airlines have already started to shift airplanes more to leisure destinations rather than big-city business routes.
4. Planes are gradually returning to the air.
A lot of planes that were parked and sent to storage in the early days of the pandemic have made their way back into the air, particularly among those used for shorter-haul flights. But some long-haul flying is starting to come back. Singapore Airlines, for example, said it would restart the world’s longest flight, from New York to Singapore, on Nov. 9.
5. Global CO2 emissions fell, a study found.
A study published in October in the journal Nature Communications found that decreased activity caused by the pandemic reduced total global CO2 emissions by 8.8% in the first half of 2020 versus the same period of 2019. Aviation accounts for 13% of that total decrease, The Wall Street Journal calculated. That is significant because in normal times, aviation accounts for only 2% to 3% of the global total. In terms of overall impact on the climate, it’s a small improvement, the paper says, and likely to be very short-term. The largest contributor to the global decrease is ground transportation. Cars and trucks are much bigger contributors to begin with.
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November 10, 2020 at 07:32AM
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How Coronavirus Has Affected Air Travel and What It Could Mean for You - The Wall Street Journal
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