Originally Posted by
expert7700
I also dream that Skytrax will go bankrupt and the new rating agency will rate cleaning and sanitizing efforts of each airline. CBC could just buy reporters tickets and arm them with black lights.
LOL ... if Skytrax were to fold then where would AC buy their "very bestest airline in the whole wide world" accolades? If Skytrax ever got into real trouble I could see Calin buying them and calling it a marketing initiative. Not kidding!
Originally Posted by
canfly15
I think many companies will find that virtual meetings between far-flung offices work quite well, raising a huge question mark about the need for future business travel. The technology for videoconferencing is now very impressive and replacing travel with virtual meetings has many benefits: it saves money and time and reduces stress on those who have to travel. This poses a threat to business class travel revenues
Originally Posted by
The Lev
I do think that corporate travel will remain subdued for a while as people get more comfortable with conferencing options and risk departments discourage non-essential travel fro ma safety and cost-cutting perspective. This will depress loads and yield.
I agree that virtual meetings probably will permanently replace some volume of business travel - if not now, then soon enough. Conferences, trade shows and large scale meetings will continue, no doubt, but I can see smaller scale trips being easily replaced with Zoom meetings. The technology works very well, bean counters love the bottom line impact and I think anyone except die-hard road warriors might appreciate not having to spend quite as many nights away from home.
Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
I think most of your speculation revolves around the concept of people catching the disease on planes. As far as I can tell from what I've read, there don't appear to have been many cases of transmission during flights. The travel-related cases seem to stem mainly from people having been on the ground in virus hotspots (people who've been to Hubei, northern Italy, etc), or having been in contact with those people during their day-to-day lives (e.g. spouses/family members etc).
So I don't expect AC to ditch the HD 777s, or put in a bunch more rows of preferred seats, or anything like that, as a result of this.
I didn't mean to imply people are getting sick on flights, because I don't believe that to be the case at all. It's more just the ideal of crowds being associated with increased risk of catching
something. After all, that's the basic message behind the call for social distancing. My question is, I wonder if that will stick in people's minds?
Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
I think we're also discovering the limitations of video conferencing. It's a lot better than it used to be, but still nowhere near the same as sitting down with someone face to face.
Agree video conferencing has limitations, which is why I noted above that I feel it probably will impact
some business travel - but not all. Depending on the nature of their work, my guess is that some business travelers with lower to mid-level status could find they have a harder time maintaining mileage and spend thresholds.