With Covid-19 social distancing measures expected to be enforced across the transport sector well into 2021 there are serious concerns among airlines that keeping the middle seat free in aircraft could be the nail in the coffin for some carriers.
Forcing airlines to block off the middle seat and limiting load factors to around 65% will likely lead to higher air fares for consumers and the end of ultra-low-cost travel, ultimately blunting the return of air travel demand.
Budget airlines, whose models rely on high load factors and low prices, are particularly at risk from the impacts of the middle seat proposal.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary put it very succinctly, describing the proposals as ‘’Idiotic’’
But social distancing measures on planes don’t have to be the answer to safe air travel post-pandemic.
There are many other things that airlines could do to keep passengers safe and the onus is now on carriers to be proactive in coming up with alternative ideas, says transportation partner Michael Wette, who leads Oliver Wyman’s transport and services practice in the Middle East.
“Such a social distancing measure would see prices finding a new plateau,” Wette reveals.
“Good airlines with a proactive chief operating officer should open conversations with medical and health experts about what the most cost effective alternatives are.
“Alternatives could include things like additional and thorough testing before the flight, distributing high quality masks and other protective equipment for everyone on the aircraft, or instead of blocking the entire middle seat you could separate passengers’ heads with additional plastics. There are a lot of potential measures.
“If one of more of these alternatives weigh out the cost of losing all this capacity, maybe that’s better and more sustainable in the future.”
Already, Emirates airlines has trialled pre-flight Coronavirus tests on site at Dubai International, which can provide results within 10 minutes.
At Abu Dhabi International, Etihad Airways has become the first airline to trial new self-service devices to monitor the temperature, heart rate and respiratory rate of passengers.
“Nowadays, the operating departments for major Airlines need to be a bit creative. The topic is so important in terms of revenue so it is worth exploring,” said Wette.
When introducing any new hardware on aircraft there has to be a regulation process, which can sometimes be lengthy. Airlines cannot afford drawn out negotiations at a time when they will be desperately trying to recover revenues.
But Wette thinks that the process could be even more cumbersome if airlines wait for regulators to provide them with new legal and compliance guidance.
“If leading airlines start proactively searching for a creative solution now, then, in my experience, the regulators would be quite happy to receive suggestions.
“That could be a quicker process than the regulators having to think something up themselves and negotiate with airlines and other groups about how to implement it.”
Wette says that alternative health measures could even be marketed to passengers as a way of instilling confidence in air travel and help carriers to boost revenues post-pandemic.
“There is segment of customers who are not expected to resume flying because of health worries. With this ‘health package’, if you market it and inform customers about how much it improves safety, you can hopefully draw these worried customers.”
Two leading carriers in Europe have already begun working on alternative solutions involving a combination of pre- and in-flight measures, according to Wette.
He concludes: “In the end, you have to balance the decision on its impact – how safe does it make the trip and what is the cost? I’m sure these carriers will come out with an entire package solution and then suggest it to the regulators rather than keeping the middle seat free.”
Low-cost carriers in particular are likely to fight their corner and offer solutions. If there is anything aviation has plenty of at the moment, it is innovators.
We would hope however, that budget airlines will stop short of using alternative health measures as a part of their ancillary revenue stream. Options such as ‘click here to upgrade your mask for $5’ do probably not give out the right message.
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