7 ms·

Coronavirus will change airlines and the way we fly

32 points by ivanvanderbyl 6y ago

Pfhreak 6y ago
I think about the depression era behaviors that stuck around in my grandparents as a good example of what to expect coming out of this pandemic. They learned certain things out of necessity and it changed their worldview on everything from darning their own socks to what ingredients they'd use in their cooking. I expect that many of us will carry similar behavioral scars for years or decades later - ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports. I don't know what all those behaviors will be, but there's no way we avoid carrying at least a few with us.
- 4RRLxFWs 6y ago
  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.
- qubex 6y ago
  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.
  - telesilla 6y ago
    Islands and countries such as Australia are having a completely different experience, as they can track incoming cases and with good quarantine practices genuinely create a safe bubble for all residents. Watch what happens with New Zealand, Iceland and other small islands like yours and the Canaries etc - you'll be out of lockdown while everyone agrees to be very strict on what enters the country, something continental countries can't do.
    - qubex 6y ago
      Yes, the lockdown procedures have been successful and the disease is definitely on a downward trend (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malta/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malta/) That kind of underscores my point, though, doesn’t it: I’ve had a very atypical experience compared to those of my compatriots (on both sides, Britain being an island but having massively bungled its management in the early stages). I’ve been working from home for six weeks and endure the annoyance of joining a short and diffuse queue to get into the local convenience store, and am at liberty to take a daily stroll in excess of a dozen kilometres; they’ve had their whole existence disrupted (they’ve lost jobs) and loved ones (I recently graduated from “know people who’ve lost their job because of this” to “know people who’ve lost a relative because of this”). It’s truly horrifying, and I’ve experienced it only vicariously, from afar.
  - ttoinou 6y ago
    Can we go in and out of Malta, if yes how ?
    - qubex 6y ago
      No we can’t: commercial (passenger) flights were suspended on 20th march and though there’s various repatriation schemes running in both directions (in and out), pretty much everything is suspended. It’s better if you abide by official sources though: https://www.maltairport.com/notifications/travel-advice-coronavirus-faqs/ https://www.maltairport.com/notifications/travel-advice-coro...
- samatman 6y ago
  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.
  - mydongle 6y ago
    Incredible that it takes a global pandemic for people to care about hygiene lol
    - hjuijjytt 6y ago
      There were no significant threats in the West before corona to justify high level of hygiene. How many people does the average person know who died of something preventable with good hygiene? Secondly, increased hygiene has it's own set of problems. You dont kill just corona, you also kill the countless harmless pathogens, but who are important to keep your immune system on its toes. Its suspected that the reason there are so many allergic persons in the West lately it's the increasingly sanitized world around us.
  - spinach 6y ago
    That's what I've always done my entire life even before the virus - the outside is gross (basic things like knowing people use the washroom and don't wash their hands and then touch knobs you do, etc). How did you not?
  - gambiting 6y ago
    ...and you didn't do that already? I'm not being funny, but since I was a little kid I was always taught that as soon as you get home you take off your shoes and go wash your hands. I actually do the same at work where the first thing I do is go wash my hands after arriving at the office. I think I assumed everyone did the same already.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      A lot of people wear their shoes on their bed and don’t wash their hands after using the restroom. Sadly, I think your assumption is off the mark :(
- grawprog 6y ago
  >ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports Wow it only took 3 months of brainwashing to permanently change your subconcious behaviour and make you paranoid of other people and the outside world? I sure hope most of humanity is at least slightly stronger willed then that and doesn't now live like a scared rabbit.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    First, rude. Second, yes, three months of heavily restricted movement, limited access to resources (from flour to dental care), to knowing people who are sick, dying, or at high risk has absolutely changed my perspective. Knowing that we've got several more months of this ahead, this is a significant portion of our lives. One way to think about it is that most of us will have spent whole integer percentage of our lives in this situation. Of course that's going to impact the way we observe and interact with the world.
ornornor 6y ago
> Configurations are likely to change as carriers try to squeeze more money from customers. If that’s not what they were already doing, I wonder what that will look like. Anyway, it’s not necessarily bad. Air travel was way too cheap considering its externalities. I know someone who _commutes_ by plane because their office is two countries over (in Europe), they don’t want to move to the much higher COL country where the job is, and the office won’t let them be remote with the same salary. So every week twice a week, they fly. And it’s still cheaper than living next to the office. This insanity and many like it must stop, it’s so much pollution for completely stupid reasons.
- rovr138 6y ago
  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?
  - ornornor 6y ago
    They fly on Sunday afternoon and leave on Friday after work, so they spent maybe 48h total with their family. They have an apartment rented next to the office. It’s still cheaper apparently because they bring their own food for the week to avoid spending money on it here, the kid goes to school in the other country, and the partner doesn’t work. Oh and the airport is 90 minutes away (by train thankfully) from the office.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    It makes total sense to me seeing as I know people who commute to London twice a week, use Airbnb from Monday to Friday and they have or rent a house elsewhere. It's still a lot cheaper than acually renting a place full time in London
- oblio 6y ago
  Is one of the countries Luxembourg?
- LeonM 6y ago
open-source-ux 6y ago
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. Why? Many people will remain cautious about travelling with strangers in closely packed airplane cabins or even train carriages. The alternative is to travel by car. But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car and so this may affect where people travel. Will densely packed cities lose out as holiday destinations? Governments want people to travel because tourism and hospitality employs thousands of people and brings substantial money into the economy for almost every country in the world. I'm sceptical the airline industry, which has thrived with low fares, particularly in Europe, will raise prices. I expect they will do everything to tempt passengers to return to the air with low fares. Will that be enough to tempt us back on board?
- qubex 6y ago
  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.
  - tshanmu 6y ago
    What's with WHO statements that there is no evidence of immunity for covid19 infected?
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      I haven't seen anything confirming that, either weakly or strongly. It's unlikely to be true, since most diseases don't behave that way, but we'll see. All we really know is that the current corona tests don't seem to be very accurate.
TekMol 6y ago
I wish they would simply remove every second seat and charge twice the price. That would mean the same revenue for the airline and a much more comfortable flight for me. Win win. And they would probably still have some wiggle room. Because 50% less customers would mean at least some reduction in costs. What about the HN gang? Would you keep flying if prices doubled?
- cscurmudgeon 6y ago
  > 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.
  - TekMol 6y ago
    Imagine 9 passengers sitting like this: *** *** *** Now lets remove 4 of them: * * * * * I would say every one has at least a 50% reduction in the number of people close to them. On top of that, minimum distance and average distance both went up. I wouldn't be surprised if the infection rate in the second example is only 10% of the first. Pair that with everyone wearing a mask. I have read that the infection rate goes down by 95% between two people wearing a mask in comparison to two peole wearing no mask. Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board. I think instead of trying to wait it out and print money, we should start to engineer ourselfes out of this crisis. [1] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-third-solution.html https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-third-solution.h...
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      > Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board. Isn't that the only thing you'd need? Then the seating arrangement wouldn't be relevant. Seems unnecessary to require both.
      - 6y ago
hjuijjytt 6y ago
I would pay to fly in a completely enclosed pod. I would enter it in my hazmat suit, seal the door, flood it with disinfectant, wait 5 min, remove hazmat suit then enjoy the flight. Put a fresh suit on before exiting. I bet a lot of other people would too, now that it's becoming acceptable walking around in masks, goggles and hazmat suits.

32 points by ivanvanderbyl 6y ago

I think about the depression era behaviors that stuck around in my grandparents as a good example of what to expect coming out of this pandemic. They learned certain things out of necessity and it changed their worldview on everything from darning their own socks to what ingredients they'd use in their cooking. I expect that many of us will carry similar behavioral scars for years or decades later - ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports. I don't know what all those behaviors will be, but there's no way we avoid carrying at least a few with us.

4RRLxFWs 6y ago
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.
qubex 6y ago
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.
- telesilla 6y ago
  Islands and countries such as Australia are having a completely different experience, as they can track incoming cases and with good quarantine practices genuinely create a safe bubble for all residents. Watch what happens with New Zealand, Iceland and other small islands like yours and the Canaries etc - you'll be out of lockdown while everyone agrees to be very strict on what enters the country, something continental countries can't do.
  - qubex 6y ago
    Yes, the lockdown procedures have been successful and the disease is definitely on a downward trend (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malta/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malta/) That kind of underscores my point, though, doesn’t it: I’ve had a very atypical experience compared to those of my compatriots (on both sides, Britain being an island but having massively bungled its management in the early stages). I’ve been working from home for six weeks and endure the annoyance of joining a short and diffuse queue to get into the local convenience store, and am at liberty to take a daily stroll in excess of a dozen kilometres; they’ve had their whole existence disrupted (they’ve lost jobs) and loved ones (I recently graduated from “know people who’ve lost their job because of this” to “know people who’ve lost a relative because of this”). It’s truly horrifying, and I’ve experienced it only vicariously, from afar.
- ttoinou 6y ago
  Can we go in and out of Malta, if yes how ?
  - qubex 6y ago
    No we can’t: commercial (passenger) flights were suspended on 20th march and though there’s various repatriation schemes running in both directions (in and out), pretty much everything is suspended. It’s better if you abide by official sources though: https://www.maltairport.com/notifications/travel-advice-coronavirus-faqs/ https://www.maltairport.com/notifications/travel-advice-coro...
samatman 6y ago
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.
- mydongle 6y ago
  Incredible that it takes a global pandemic for people to care about hygiene lol
  - hjuijjytt 6y ago
    There were no significant threats in the West before corona to justify high level of hygiene. How many people does the average person know who died of something preventable with good hygiene? Secondly, increased hygiene has it's own set of problems. You dont kill just corona, you also kill the countless harmless pathogens, but who are important to keep your immune system on its toes. Its suspected that the reason there are so many allergic persons in the West lately it's the increasingly sanitized world around us.
- spinach 6y ago
  That's what I've always done my entire life even before the virus - the outside is gross (basic things like knowing people use the washroom and don't wash their hands and then touch knobs you do, etc). How did you not?
- gambiting 6y ago
  ...and you didn't do that already? I'm not being funny, but since I was a little kid I was always taught that as soon as you get home you take off your shoes and go wash your hands. I actually do the same at work where the first thing I do is go wash my hands after arriving at the office. I think I assumed everyone did the same already.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    A lot of people wear their shoes on their bed and don’t wash their hands after using the restroom. Sadly, I think your assumption is off the mark :(
grawprog 6y ago
>ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports Wow it only took 3 months of brainwashing to permanently change your subconcious behaviour and make you paranoid of other people and the outside world? I sure hope most of humanity is at least slightly stronger willed then that and doesn't now live like a scared rabbit.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  First, rude. Second, yes, three months of heavily restricted movement, limited access to resources (from flour to dental care), to knowing people who are sick, dying, or at high risk has absolutely changed my perspective. Knowing that we've got several more months of this ahead, this is a significant portion of our lives. One way to think about it is that most of us will have spent whole integer percentage of our lives in this situation. Of course that's going to impact the way we observe and interact with the world.

ornornor 6y ago

> Configurations are likely to change as carriers try to squeeze more money from customers. If that’s not what they were already doing, I wonder what that will look like. Anyway, it’s not necessarily bad. Air travel was way too cheap considering its externalities. I know someone who _commutes_ by plane because their office is two countries over (in Europe), they don’t want to move to the much higher COL country where the job is, and the office won’t let them be remote with the same salary. So every week twice a week, they fly. And it’s still cheaper than living next to the office. This insanity and many like it must stop, it’s so much pollution for completely stupid reasons.

rovr138 6y ago
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?
- ornornor 6y ago
  They fly on Sunday afternoon and leave on Friday after work, so they spent maybe 48h total with their family. They have an apartment rented next to the office. It’s still cheaper apparently because they bring their own food for the week to avoid spending money on it here, the kid goes to school in the other country, and the partner doesn’t work. Oh and the airport is 90 minutes away (by train thankfully) from the office.
- gambiting 6y ago
  It makes total sense to me seeing as I know people who commute to London twice a week, use Airbnb from Monday to Friday and they have or rent a house elsewhere. It's still a lot cheaper than acually renting a place full time in London
oblio 6y ago
Is one of the countries Luxembourg?
LeonM 6y ago

open-source-ux 6y ago

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. Why? Many people will remain cautious about travelling with strangers in closely packed airplane cabins or even train carriages. The alternative is to travel by car. But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car and so this may affect where people travel. Will densely packed cities lose out as holiday destinations? Governments want people to travel because tourism and hospitality employs thousands of people and brings substantial money into the economy for almost every country in the world. I'm sceptical the airline industry, which has thrived with low fares, particularly in Europe, will raise prices. I expect they will do everything to tempt passengers to return to the air with low fares. Will that be enough to tempt us back on board?

qubex 6y ago
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.
- tshanmu 6y ago
  What's with WHO statements that there is no evidence of immunity for covid19 infected?
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    I haven't seen anything confirming that, either weakly or strongly. It's unlikely to be true, since most diseases don't behave that way, but we'll see. All we really know is that the current corona tests don't seem to be very accurate.

TekMol 6y ago

I wish they would simply remove every second seat and charge twice the price. That would mean the same revenue for the airline and a much more comfortable flight for me. Win win. And they would probably still have some wiggle room. Because 50% less customers would mean at least some reduction in costs. What about the HN gang? Would you keep flying if prices doubled?

cscurmudgeon 6y ago
> 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.
- TekMol 6y ago
  Imagine 9 passengers sitting like this: *** *** *** Now lets remove 4 of them: * * * * * I would say every one has at least a 50% reduction in the number of people close to them. On top of that, minimum distance and average distance both went up. I wouldn't be surprised if the infection rate in the second example is only 10% of the first. Pair that with everyone wearing a mask. I have read that the infection rate goes down by 95% between two people wearing a mask in comparison to two peole wearing no mask. Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board. I think instead of trying to wait it out and print money, we should start to engineer ourselfes out of this crisis. [1] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-third-solution.html https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-third-solution.h...
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board. Isn't that the only thing you'd need? Then the seating arrangement wouldn't be relevant. Seems unnecessary to require both.
    - 6y ago

hjuijjytt 6y ago

I would pay to fly in a completely enclosed pod. I would enter it in my hazmat suit, seal the door, flood it with disinfectant, wait 5 min, remove hazmat suit then enjoy the flight. Put a fresh suit on before exiting. I bet a lot of other people would too, now that it's becoming acceptable walking around in masks, goggles and hazmat suits.