Where and Why are People Still Flying?
 

I'm curious, title says it all... where and why are people still flying.

Sorry if this has already been asked... mods feel free to merge if so!

rb211.

To get to family/escape to safety.

I know a couple of families (parents and children under 10) who are split up at the moment in different countries and trying to work out how they will get back together.
In both cases they were visiting parents in another country to where they live, and for different reasons, they weren't in a position to be able to just jump on a flight to get back to their families when flights were being cancelled and boarders closed.
One of them is hoping BA will be able to bring them back to their partner and kids who they haven't seen for three weeks.

they need to go somewhere, eg nationals returning home early from holidays and not every country has imposed knee-jerk isolation/no entry yet.

The UK must be one of the few countries that hasn't imposed some sort of entry restrictions. I imagine most flights now are basically as you say people getting home or airlines being paid by governments to repatriate citizens. Can't see how much longer even this volume of non cargo aviation can be sustainable though

There’s a lot of holidaying customers being brought home (both directions) - paid for largely by package holiday and insurance companies who are obligated to support.
Also a fair amount of government traffic, which is exempt from bans in nearly every country.

The government have just closed all the schools - and the boarding school children now have to return home.

The university closure also may result in many overseas students heading home.

What's the link to BA here? Seems somewhat off piste to me.

I hope the Mods will allow some discretion regarding allowable topics because direct BA items are diminishing rapidly.

This is not strictly true, as private schools don't always have to comply with government recommendations, although I am not aware of any that aren't. However, pupils would still be provisioned to stay until the end of term anyway as flights may have already been booked/ other arrangements made and so there would still be some pupils in schools for the next week or so.

I accept that but was, as you probably realise, shortening the reply for cases in the main as to why people would be flying. I am not aware of any that have not closed and indeed have just had two nippers visiting from one such institution who are now on long holidays albeit with remote learning! There are probably some awkward possibilities for kids of ex-pat parents in countries that do not allow foreigners in at the moment. Or they have to go into immediate isolation if they arrive into their home country.

Interesting times all round!

BA took me to Amsterdam today. I’ve searched the city high and low for Tork Premium toiletpapier. I’ll be flying home empty handed tonight. The red white and blue serviettes in the lounge are looking mighty tempting.... :)

London tmrw for a meeting Monday then back up home

Off to Munich on Monday (I see the flight(the only one of the day) is full) - pick up my stuff (I live there) and come back to the UK on Wednesday. I was due to be leaving Germany in April but will hold off de-registering as if it all goes to sh*t then I am better off with the German social system than the UK one!

Flying. People flying. BA flies people. I think most of us have the intelligence to make the small leap to include '..on BA' to the thread title, considering this is literally the BA board, without explicitly spelling it out? Sheesh :rolleyes: