It has been more than 7 months since the COVID pandemic hit the US and Europe. After bringing global passenger transportation to a virtual halt, and seeing the pace of recovery and the likelihood of further pandemics is not negligible anymore, it seems clear by now that we will have to live with this new normal in the foreseeable future. This is a new situation with long lasting effects and maybe permanent changes to the economy and to our everyday lives.
Our foreseeable future is still full of questions, but if we talk aviation and transportation technology, there are some trends that appear to be clear. So I decided to have this conversation within Skymantics to get everyone’s view on their respective areas of expertise.
Charles
“The pandemic has caused many business to close their doors and others to impose restrictions. This is especially affecting airports, where travelers are less likely to shop, and this loss of ancillary revenue has a dramatic effect on airport operations.”
“Another paradigm shift is occurring in office working conditions. Many office environments are moving to remote working, and Zoom is replacing business travel, maybe permanently. This may also mean a shift from business-centric to pleasure-centric air travelers, with downstream effects on the target market of the travel industry. But with this comes digital transformation to conduct business more effectively. This means for instance that employees no longer need to live in urban areas and can move to areas with lower costs of living, which is going to result in a massive domestic migration. This digital transformation will also lead to large organizational changes in Federal and state agencies as they adapt to this distributed workforce.”
Antonio
“I am detecting important shifts in travel patterns. Traditionally high long-distance travel is giving way to a higher share of travel at local or regional level. To minimise the travel surface to which passengers are exposed, network models for routes will give place to more direct routes. This means smaller aircraft, fewer connectivity hubs and more hubs closer to travel destinations.”
“In the area of cargo, it is increasingly expected that this activity will thrive and have a higher share compared to passenger transportation. This implies a huge reconfiguration of routes, vehicles and hubs is underway. Especially, and in the spirit to avoid contact, the opportunity for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for logistics seems more immediate than ever – if regulation is able to speed up – to fill the void in an emptier airspace.”
Nacho
“With the massive disruption of air traffic routes and the vulnerability of the air travel industry, passenger transportation relies more than ever in multimodality to ensure capillary of the transport network. This is an opportunity to rethink transport holistically and efficiently. Passenger choices of mode of transportation may turn away from aviation due to factors not taken into consideration before (e.g. minimize crowded spaces, prioritize low-risk choices).”
Peter
“We have seen an explosion of online shopping services, and these will get cheaper and faster with increasing efficiency in shipping and logistics. Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) is setting the stage for bigger and longer flights. Flights that go Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) will be involved in multiple roles for the first/last mile deliveries, as well as long haul.”
“The aftermath of the virus will also change educational and employment norms in society. Remote work and school will become more acceptable; but there will still be a need to meet with peers in real life. The scope of these meetings will shift more towards relationship building for teams.”
Leon
“Priority is shifting away from airspace capacity. With demand not expected to achieve pre-pandemic levels in at least three years, this gives a time margin where research can be focused on other priorities – such as NextGen, the FAA-led modernization of America’s air transportation system to make flying even safer, more efficient, and more predictable.“
Sergio
“With the quick pace of vaccine development, I believe the pandemic will be over by Q3 2021. It will have left behind an economic recession, a stronger culture of sanitization and disease prevention in shared spaces like airports, and potentially a reduction in business travel due to a shift in corporate culture. Rather than fear, preparedness to a novel virus pandemic will influence decision making after that, with contactless processes and drone deliveries becoming the new normal.”
“The reduction of air operations are being used to speed up infrastructure developments at airport facilities and airspace design, where a reduction in traffic make work simpler and less costly to implement. Efforts to increase system capacity should be now stronger than ever, since the world was already behind schedule on addressing this problem. In a way, the pandemic has given the industry a chance to catch up.”
I would be delighted to hear other insights from industry experts.
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