After COVID-19, flying will be safer, getting more and more enjoyable.
The COVID-19 pandemic has replaced our lives. More than 1. 6 million international people have died from the disease. As in-person activities were forced to stop, we canceled vacations, postponed weddings, lost birthdays and anniversaries, and gave up friendships, lucrative business meetings that could have simply been.
One way to quantify the countless doors that have been closed to each of us through the new coronavirus is to take a look at the global industry: although it has doubled from 2. 25 billion passengers in 2006 to 4. 5 billion passengers in 2019, global airport traffic is expected. it will decline by two-thirds by 2020, to just 1. 53 billion passengers, resulting in losses of $118. 5 billion.
That’s the bad news. But here’s the good news: air transport will recover and, with it, all the people, all the options and all the reports that in 2020 felt hopelessly out of our reach, and when this is the case, airports and airlines will receive merit from the classes learned about the pandemic to make flying not only safer for passengers , but also faster and more convenient. In a word: better.
A resilient industry
The travel industry has already gone through a difficult time, although nothing equals the effect of COVID-19, aviation was deeply affected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. airlines. And after either occasion, the airlines nevertheless regained their balance. I mean, the travel industry is resilient.
One of the reasons for his resistance is his wit. In the face of the crisis, airports and airlines have proven creative, agile and adaptable. In the dark days after September 11, they temporarily designed and implemented an entirely new form of safe air that included new policies, procedures, and infrastructure, adding strong TSA checkpoints. Over time, through continuous improvement in the form of systems like TSA PreCheck, those procedures have also become more effective and effective.
A similar and no less cutting-edge transformation of aviation is already underway in reaction to the pandemic, giving passengers comfort and confidence in thinking about when to board. filtration systems, which use HEPA filters that eliminate airborne pathogens and decrease the transmission of airborne diseases. They have also implemented new cleaning procedures and technologies, such as electrostatic spraying and UV-C light to disinfect aircraft surfaces between flights. Similar air cleaning and control solutions, and have also reorganized passenger contact problems to increase social distance and decrease contact with surfaces in the first place.
In just a few months, those small adjustments have had a significant effect on the physical condition and protection of passengers, and the industry is just getting started.
Next-generation air travel
To recover, the industry wants two things: a solution to the virus and a strong economic recovery. It will be a while before passengers return en masse, but when they do, a new fun will await.
In addition to cleaning innovations, passengers can expect to revel in at least two major innovations in the air on their way to their final destination over the next few years.
The first is “contactless” safety control and biometric passenger processing responses, such as facial recognition. Or even better, because travelers now wear masks, new products like Keyo, that can identify passengers in less than a moment thanks to a contactless scan of their palms.
The time to upgrade to get to an airport near you is processing just in time. Instead of showing up at the airport two hours before your flight, think about the gate until takeoff and then the state in a slow line for your flight. boarding point and sit down, think you receive a cellular alert that tells you precisely when to get to the airport and then to your door. When you arrive, you can use the above-mentioned contactless generation to pass security and, in a short time, board the aircraft No more waiting. No more meetings. No more crowds.
Flying with a frown?
You may not feel like you are in the living room where you have been taking refuge for a year, however, the air is bright. Human beings are social creatures. We want to attach in person, when the COVID-19 is completed, the planes will help us to do it as they did in the last century, but now, finally, we can also enjoy the holidays as much as the destination.
President and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace