Opinion: Your Air Travel Experience Will Never Be the Same

Even before covid 19 flying was often a pretty miserable affair at least for those of us not fortunate enough to be sitting in the business class cabin the hygiene and health measures that airlines are introducing to get us flying again could mean that flying becomes an even less enjoyable experience

How will flying change well for starters they will probably be less demand for it airlines are already downsizing their fleets and workforces an anticipation that demand won't recover for years and when we do fly it'll probably feel very different we'll have to wear face masks in the aircraft and airport terminal the cabin will be disinfected more thoroughly which could increase turnaround times between flights and to minimize physical contact with staff and other passengers will scan boarding passes ourselves board in smaller groups and will be offered less food and drink on board instead of boarding first business-class passengers may have to wait until the last customers will be discouraged from moving around in the cabin and sadly in-flight magazines may be a thing of the past at a minimum

we'll probably have our temperatures check when we arrive at the airport problem is though this doesn't weed out the high proportion of asymptomatic virus cases that means blood tests or so-called immunity passports may be required in some countries quarantines will remain in force for international passengers

which may put many of them are flying in the first place the new measures probably mean you have to arrive even earlier for your flight and just imagine a properly socially distance queue at immigration and baggage reclaim the boss of Heathrow Europe's busiest airport has warned that social distancing will be close to physically impossible maybe the same is true inside the aircraft to modern planes have air filtration systems that remove viruses but some carriers have started to leave the middle seat unoccupied to reassure their customers there are drawbacks to this approach though

what if the person in the seat in front or behind has a cough and leaving seats empty also creates more carbon pollution per passenger carried European carriers typically need to fill about 80 percent of seats to break-even so to compensate they'll have to cut their costs or raise prices but doing the latter will be difficult until demand recovers to be clear it's absolutely vital that airlines can reassure their passengers and convince governments that more flying won't spark a second wave of infections but sadly we shouldn't expect flying to get any more enjoyable in the future