The modern 21st century world is moving too fast. On one side, there is a tremendous terror of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2, also known as Novel Corona Virus) and on the other side, everyone, individual and the society as a whole, is making an effort continuously in order to mitigate and recover as soon as possible. The world is now, moving towards a recovery phase and every sector is required to gear up for sustaining in the rigorously competitive market with much more effectiveness and efficiency than before. Synergy between anything should be considered a priority, keeping in view the human resource first.
Recently, the world’s second oldest and Latin America’s largest airline ‘Avianca’ has filed for bankruptcy since its operations were severely impacted due to COVID-19 and it is expected that most of the airlines domestically may leave the market if government doesn’t intervene and support the loss-making airlines from bankruptcy. So, would the operations be resumed? and would it be safe? Let’s look at what happened when the operations were resumed domestically.
On resuming of the airline operations, 23 people were tested positive for coronavirus in the first 4 days and furthermore, people were requested to arrive at least 4 hrs early to the airport before boarding the flight. So, the many relative questions arise such as:
- How would aviation market cope up with upcoming future?
- Is reaching 4 hrs prior boarding the flight is the new normal?
- Will the security and safety of the people be at stake?
- Will the airline operations be halted again in future?
Prof. Wouter Dewulf, Academic Director, C-MAT, University of Antwerp has answered and mentioned in webinar organized by Adani group at Adani Institute of Infrastructure Management that airline industry has survived 6 disasters in the past and will survive this too. The entire aviation market is trying to save the industry although it can’t be bulletproof. There are many aspects which are to be looked at while defining the “New Normal” in airline industry.
Europe has started picking luggage from the origin (home/hotel/workplace etc.) and then, directly transporting it to the destination airport to avoid contact. This is what the world is trying to do. But what about India? Has India started doing anything?
If you are looking for any revolution then, Bangalore (Kempegowda International Airport) has started working on it with the tagline “#WeAreHereForYou”, contactless parking, taxi sanitization, web check in, contact less boarding, thermal scanning via Arogya setu app, trolley disinfecting tunnel, opening of door via boarding pass, no contact identification, manual tag printing and application, etc. In short hassle free, seamless, contactless, boarding at Bangalore airport. Let us look at how the future might look like:
Enhanced passenger flow management
For reducing the time while maintaining social distancing, check in would be online and a lot of kiosk desks would be made from where the passengers can print out the tag by just scanning the online boarding pass. And can then further put the tag themselves manually to avoid anyone else’s contact. After that they have to submit the bag at the counter and cross verification of identity would be done contactless.
Increased pressure of automation and robots
Demonetization brought revolution in digitalization, making digital India campaign viral and it seems COVID-19 is going to boost up automation and robotics in all industries and airline is not any different. For maintaining social distancing and contactless work, everything is needed to be automated and robotized to eliminate putting lives at risk.
Improved hand hygiene management
Contactless hand sanitizing is the new future. People are afraid to touch even the sanitizer’s physical body and this has hyped the market for contactless hand hygiene management.
Implement contactless technologies
Contactless technologies can be implemented for various things, be it, hand sanitizing, thermal scanning, online web check in or cross identification of the identity.
Improved hygiene for frequently touched surfaces
Although human touch is avoided but then also it’s going to happen and willingly or unwillingly people are going to touch the surfaces. So, for that airports are required to sanitize the surfaces as frequent as possible to eliminate risk of germs spread.
Airport indoor air quality (AIQ)
Just like the sprinklers are installed at railway stations, airports are also required to sanitize with the help of sprinklers and further the air quality is required to maintained. So, that even in worst case scenario there won’t be spread of any kind of germs.
Higher efficient cyber security
Airline industry is known for their security and this is the thing which can’t be overlooked while developing a completely new world after this COVID 19. With automation and robotics although risking of staff’s lives would be mitigated but this is not bulletproof if we look at security point of view. So, there would be a mix of digitalized as well humanized environment minimizing human involvement.
Concept of e-planes
Mr. Ben Zandi, CEO, Adani airports, stated in a seminar organized by Adani group that soon there will be e-planes which would even reduce manpower. The e-planes would prove that low-cost, environmentally friendly and commercial electric air travel can be a reality in the very near future. The e-planes would be flying long distances and hence mitigating future crisis in advance.
In short, digitalizing everything would be led to higher passenger conversion cost in airline industry. Although, Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes but we all are sure that there would be sunrise again tomorrow and that new sun, would be the “New Normal."
Seems fascinating, right? But is the grass all green? Or there’s some associated cost with it? Obviously, nothing comes for free. So, there would be challenges with this “New Normal” too. Let’s look at these from industry’s point of view:
Reduction in revenue
Although the terror of COVID-19 will be diminished but people are now preferring just the “essential travel” and “non-essential” travel is at halt. The coming of new normal still has time to encourage people for non-essential travel and hence due to minimizing of operations, the aeronautical as well as non-aeronautical revenue would see reduction for shorter time frame even in the new normal.
Reduced efficiency
The airport operations are not only the obligations followed by the airlines and the airport operator but involves the combined productivity of the all the parties to the contract in operating the airport like ground handling operator, MRO operator, etc. Thus, the increase in dependency on automation and machinery to achieve least contact or contact operational efficiency and reduction in human workforce are going to be the result of this “New Normal”. We need to attract customers to the airport to maintain the incoming revenues and reduce the risk of airline defaults.
Rebuilding trust
Post COVID, it is the need of the airline and the airport industry to rebuild the trust of the customers after many passengers were found infected with the pandemic virus during the journey and in the terminals while check in and check out. Also, in addition with more and more automized and digitalized travel, tech phobic population will be reluctant to travel. So, rebuilding the trust again and helping customers in all steps and even before they ask, is a challenge.
References:
[6] “Airlines & Airports Business: the Post COVID-19” workshop organised by Adani Institute of Infrastructure.
About the Author:
Apoorv Tiwari
Apoorv is a civil engineer fuelled by his interest in marketing & strategy. He is trained under JSPL and CIL by getting into technicalities of operations as well as management. His openness to new learnings landed him in Infrastructure management. His profound interest in research helped him in contributing to various publications and his travelling experiences had also helped him in learning new things and has endorsed life skills.
Sweet and to the point. Now go deeper into a few issues.
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