Here's how coronavirus will change air travel:
Well-to-do leisure travelers will be the first to test the waters, says Mann, and “when the canaries come back uninfected and unaffected,” that will give corporations reason to relax their travel bans and send the road warriors out, giving airlines some of their most lucrative customers again.
But if airlines leave seats empty to allow for social distancing, either willingly or due to government regulations, for any length of time, that will put pressure on them to raise fares. Last year, airlines worldwide broke even when the cabin was, according to the industry group IATA. if middle seats are left vacant, that means at best only 67% of seats will be available.
Reduced service to second- and third-tier cities and less competition could also lead to higher fares to some destinations.We’ll have fewer options and some routes that were once nonstop will now require connections, perhaps by a circuitous route. Layovers in hubs could be longer.
The price gap may disappear between budget airlines and the majors, and budget airlines may be pushed out of some markets: The major airlines in the past have often been content to offer budget fares $10 or $20 above low-cost carriers like Spirit or Frontier. In competitive markets, they’ll now likely be less willing to let passengers spill over to the smaller carriers, and they’ll have stronger balance sheets to absorb the short-term pain of a price war, says Henry Harteveldt, who heads Atmosphere Research Group. “Some airlines will be brutal in how they use their pricing software,” he says.
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