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What if aviation doesn’t recover?
- sushshshsh 6y agoI'm banking on a political wind-shifting event where suddenly the vogue thing to do will be to allow all commerce to proceed like normal and social distancing will suddenly be relaxed. Not sure what political events would cause that to happen but it is within the realm of possibility.
- netsharc 6y agoIt wouldn't be political, but medical: a vaccine. Even if everything got relaxed, with the virus still around, the paranoid will still avoid gatherings, etc, and the economy will not return to normal. Maybe a draconian takeover of the world by a government that then suppresses information and says "We solved the virus!" convincingly enough would be such an event. Meanwhile at least 1 "leader" is saying the above sentence, but he's only convincing a dwindling number of die-hard supporters. As Orwell said: > We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
- gonzo41 6y agoI think you're right, that this will probably happen, but until there's a vaccine COVID will flare up again and again smashing multiple sectors.
- mathattack 6y agoIt will recover. The current investors might not.
- dawnerd 6y agoI'm considering investing into the top few airlines knowing that eventually they'll be back to normal. They'll get bailed out and the stock will go right back up to where it was.
- mathattack 6y agoI’m not an investment advisor. In some bailouts the equity holders get wiped out.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/KXh7w https://archive.is/KXh7w
- Kiro 6y agoI hope it doesn't and I'm disgusted with the romanticization of something so utterly destructive and unnecessary. The right thing is to never travel with plane again. I'm glad I live in a country where flying became taboo long before corona.
- jjeaff 6y agoIn what country is flying taboo?
- jejay 6y agoIn Germany if you live in a bubble of progressive mid-20s. Probably the same for other European nations. I am mid/late twenty myself, commute a lot to other countries via plane and laugh about it. It's not that is an actual industry hurting phenomena, without corona aviation is doing fine everywhere and growing.
- pacifist 6y agoRight behind you! Listen to Greta. Listen to the science. Stop driving. Don't fly.
- hwillis 6y agoper passenger-mile, flying is much less polluting than driving a car, even after you account for the fact that pollution in the stratosphere is more damaging. If getting rid of air travel results in more people driving across the country, that makes the greenhouse worse. In terms of absolute consumption, yes it would be great if people stopped spending so much on things that are damaging the environment... but it would be FAR better to instead spend money on renewable energy and electric cars, which are by far the most effective ways to reduce CO2.
- Kiro 6y agoDomestic flights are obviously the worst kind of flights. I see no reason for them to exist at all when we have trains. Yes, I think everyone should stop driving as well. I agree about the renewable energy but we need to take action on both fronts.
- bankim 6y agoPaywall. Can we get access to the full post?
- vsareto 6y agooutline.com/https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2020/07/04/what-if-aviation-doesnt-recover-from-covid-19 https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2020/07/04/what-if-av...
- dredmorbius 6y agoDirect URL: https://outline.com/VVqWMy https://outline.com/VVqWMy
- xwdv 6y agoIf aviation doesn’t recover then it’s back to the old days when a ticket costs a minimum of $1000 and only a privileged few can travel very far. Hopefully no one who is retiring now had plans to travel the world because whatever they saved up won’t be enough.
- justinator 6y agoThink when I get to retirement age, plan is to travel the world, by bike. The Americas will take a while; once done with that, I'll maybe hop on a boat.
- jbay808 6y agoI hope you retire very fit and healthy!
- justinator 6y ago(me too!)
- amwelles 6y agoBicycle touring is so much fun! I did a four-day trip a couple years back, and there’s something about slowly pedaling your way from point A to point B that’s incredibly satisfying.
- tehjoker 6y agoAviation has always been implicitly or explicitly state supported. Worrying about the market is just a farce. Think about how research is done, the aircraft makers get fat on their defense grants, airport land and infrastructure are built with subsidies, the transportation to and from the airport are usually public buses, metro, or public roads, the regulation of airspace by the FAA is taxpayer funded, the security theater is provided by DHS, it goes on and on. Only the most visible part of the system is really "deregulated" and run by people trying to make money. Even then they get bailed out whenever they whimper.
- bcrosby95 6y agoThen what mode of transit isn't implicitly or explicitly state supported? Even when I walk somewhere I use the sidewalk.
- henryfjordan 6y agoBoating? But that's kinda the GP's point, that the state WANTS you to be able to travel. Travel encourages trade, which generates more tax revenue. Of course the govt will support any sufficiently large mode of travel.
- storyinmemo 6y agoBoating? NOAA, Coast Guard, charting work, navigation buoys, harbor masters, etc.
- mcpherrinm 6y agoHarbours, anchorages, canals, dredged channels, breakwaters
- classified 6y agoThe risk that sidewalks won't recover is just as low.
- catalogia 6y agoI suppose it would be too much to hope for more trains.
- twblalock 6y agoWould you get on a train right now, during a pandemic? I wouldn't, and I like trains more than most people do. I'n sticking with my own car for transportation for the foreseeable future, and everyone else who owns a car is doing the same. I'm not going to put myself in a large metal box full of other people who might be sick.
- gilbetron 6y agoTrains can feasibly put in ventilation systems that shoves inside air out, and pulls in fresh air. Recirculating air systems are the nasty part with covid. Trains aren't (much) concerned with weight, so can easily pack on the ventilation. I travel periodically for my remote job, and getting on a train on a Monday, working all day, then being at my HQ for several days before working all the way on a Friday sounds much better to me at this point. Building more rail lines ... well that's another matter.
- dawnerd 6y agoFYI airplanes do pull in fresh air too, they're not a completely sealed tube like people seem to think. The air itself in a plane isn't what concerns me, it's being so close to so many people and all the high contact surfaces that are rarely cleaned).
- darren_ 6y agoYes, and regularly, and so do millions of other Tokyo residents. Cases here are up to ~200 daily new cases with (AFAIK) zero linked to public transit (and this is weeks after our quasi-lockdown ended). If public transit/trains were by definition a significant risk factor Tokyo's situation would look a _lot_ different. Now maybe a train stuffed with non-mask wearing people talking constantly would be a different issue.
- option 6y agoit would be very sad and a huge net negative for the world. Being able to cheaply and quickly travel practically anywhere makes us see others as much less different from us and helps us see global issues as our issues
- Kiro 6y agoAnd cause global issues while you're at it. No, it would be a net positive for the world and the environment for sure.
- jejay 6y agoOr maybe we want to keep the peace induced through learning about different cultures via cheap travel. Maybe building dams is cheaper than recovering from a world war three.
- justinator 6y agoI mean, it's a part of globalization, but I would argue that being able to skip most of the parts of the globe you don't want to deal with by traveling many miles above it isn't really helping with having an understanding of the world. It's another topic altogether what you do once you get there, but if it's just to vacation, then: :shrug:.
- m3at 6y agoKey excerpt: "That covid-19 has exposed the fragility of globalisation is particularly apparent in the case of aviation. [...] historians will write that it was not radical environmental movements such as Extinction Rebellion that killed the trend. Instead it was the combination of a microscopic virus and free-market capitalism." This reminded me of accelerationism [1], which seems more relevant now than ever. To quote Wikipedia: " [Accelerationism may refer] to support for the intensification of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-destructive tendencies and ultimately lead to its collapse" [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
- chrismatheson 6y agoHmmmmm is it possible SoftBank are Accellerationists ....
- lsllc 6y agoSo what? While the convenience of air travel is nice, I think the environmental cost right now is too great -- don't get me wrong, I love being able to hop on a plane and travel to say France (not that I can do that anymore with C19). It's somewhat selfish though, there's a pretty decent CO2 cost associated with it. Maybe I get to go overseas if I make a commitment to offsetting the CO2 that I use (e.g. carbon credits) ... but that's hardly very progressive (why should only the wealthy only get to travel). I suppose we could try to clean up shipping [bunker fuel] so we could go via some sort of gas turbine / wind powered cruise ship. Or maybe this change in economic fortunes makes solar powered airships viable! Slow(-ish), but clean (& maybe fun!), I'm thinking the Mark Twain airship in "The Long Earth". ... I think I like the Mark Twain airship idea ... it sounds fun.
- TheCapeGreek 6y agoThis would only work in a culture that fully embraces remote working, and the ships would need high availability bandwidth that doesn't cost insane amounts for terrible speeds. This is because there's I'd either have to waste a week or two of my leave time just traveling, or would have to convince my employer to let me work remotely.
- lsllc 6y agoNot sure how this is different from a cruise-ship but I don't see why between satellites and high-altitude stationary relays (or something like Tesla Starlink) couldn't work. For sure though, it's a different life-pace.
- mshaler 6y agoI'm struck by our possible near-term loss of aviation and a possible post-melange loss of space travel. (Then again: 140 characters not flying cars.)