Only about a third as many passengers are booking airline seats compared to a year ago as airlines enter the Thanksgiving and December holiday period, traditionally one of their busiest seasons.
Passenger volume will not reach 50 percent of capacity until a vaccine has been widely distributed, said Scott Kirby, United Airlines CEO. In October, the airline will fly only 46 percent of the schedule it maintained a year ago, he added.
It also will restore service on 50 routes, reduce service on days usually less busy, and market more aggressively to people seeking weekend pleasure trips.
To lure customers, United abolished fees for changes to tickets, a move immediately copied by American, Delta, Alaska Air, and Hawaiian Airlines.
U.S. carriers have let go of about 100,000 workers, or about 20 percent of employees, since the shutdown began, and collectively are still losing about $6 billion a month, according to trade group Airlines for America.
Carriers also have retired old planes and postponed purchases of new ones.
A 40-percent drop in fuel prices over the past 12 months has brought little relief.
Industry executives have predicted that air travel will not return to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2024.
TREND FORECAST: The implications of how hard the airline industry has been hit and all those businesses and professions that have been affected by the lockdowns spreads across continents: tourism, band tours, business travel, trade shows, conventions, attending weddings, events, parties, visiting family and friends… dead and gone.
Revenue losses will not be recovered, and businesses will go out of business. And with strict quarantine rules imposed on people traveling from different nations and states still in place and increasing – such as they have in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, where the governors just added four more restricted states – the airline industry will continue to suffer.
TREND FORECAST: Regarding overseas travel, as we have reported, tourism, accounting for between 10 to 13 percent of some European nations’ GDP, has been devastated by the travel restrictions of people from other nations, lockdown rules, and other COVID Regulations.
According to Giorgio Palmucci, President of the Italian National Tourist Board, “The projected 2020 loss from overseas visitors to Italy is €24.6 billion and even domestic traveler spending is down €43.6 billion.”
And as reported by CNN: “The Italian Confederation of Business has reported that 70% of hotels in cities like Rome and Florence and 20% in coastal areas never even reopened after the lockdown. The Italian National Institute of Statistics projects that 60% of businesses in the industry fear imminent collapse.”
Therefore, for politicians and economists to predict a V-shaped recovery or economic rebound lacks the fundamental facts and realities on the streets: across the globe, people are losing their businesses and livelihoods and are broke and busted. They will not miraculously rebound into prosperity and newfound riches.
