COVID-19
ANALYSIS
Simon Miles, MD of Miles Aviation Consulting, looks
at the broader aviation canvas and offers some
analysis of the pre and post-COVID-19 landscape.
A brave(r) new the ruin that the closure of UK
A few weeks ago, the
industry applied its
emergency speed brakes
in anticipation of what was
about to hit us.
In a short space of time,
we have all had to adapt to
new and frequently changing
norms, rules, behaviours
and attitudes, many of them
unwritten. It takes some
getting used to. However, the
economic devastation that
this virus has wrought on the
world’s economies seems to
suggest that we won’t be going
back to the world that we left a
few short weeks ago in March
anytime soon, if at all.
In these few short weeks,
we’ve seen the industry brought to its knees, and all but come
to a standstill. Vast amounts of aircraft are in storage and huge
numbers of staff have lost their jobs or have been furloughed.
The industry has tested and continues to test the respective
government’s appetite to support it, and so far, the signs are not
particularly encouraging. The year-on-year industry growth of the
last ten years has now been, very quickly, wiped out and replaced
by a fight for survival.
The pre-COVID-19 landscape
Thinking back a few months, and despite the overall healthy
growth, it seemed as though the storm clouds were gathering,
particularly in the UK. Big industry infrastructure projects, such
as the third runway at Heathrow, are all but dead in the water;
and there were three significant airline failures in as many years,
with another inevitable failure just a few weeks ago, that of Flybe.
Whichever way you look at it, there is little positive about any of
that.
Other, previous failures, as devastating as they were, would not
have had quite the same impact as that of Flybe. It reminds me of
coal mines in the mid-1980s
brought to local communities:
the effects of those decisions
are still being felt today.
Although there had been
some brief route take-up by
others, the likelihood of vital
regional flying returning on
that scale now appears to be
very low. Although many
local routes were unprofitable,
they, nevertheless, created an
essential social and commerce
link for those communities,
the importance of which
should not be forgotten or
underestimated as we go
forward.
At any other time, Flybe’s
28 June 2020 www.airlogisticsinternational.com
/www.airlogisticsinternational.com