Technology could play a major role in trying to lure passengers back as airports and airlines prepare for a return to travel in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, with some sci-fi-like approaches possible to help them feel safer in the sky.
Daniel Gooch, the president of the Canadian Airports Council, was winging his way to Vancouver from Ottawa for meetings on March 12 just as the coronavirus was about to upend the world.
“By the time I landed, most of my meetings were cancelled,” he told CBC News.
The next morning, he got on a plane and returned home to Ottawa. It was his last business trip.
“It’s going to be a very long recovery,” Gooch said. “The airports are empty, the revenue has almost completely stopped and we don’t know when it will come back.”
If and when air travel does come back, technology could play a big role, as airports and airlines around the world explore and develop some sci-fi-like approaches to help passengers feel safer.
“Welcome to the airline flight of 2021. Before boarding, walk through the disinfection tunnel and the thermal scanner and have your bags sanitagged,” begins a report, The Rise of Sanitized Travel, published by an aviation marketing consultancy in April.
Flying for business and pleasure is still largely grounded, down more than 90 per cent in North America since March, according to passenger numbers from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
Air Canada has also said it is laying off at least half its staff.
WATCH | The president of the Canadian Airports Council talks about border innovations:
The president of the Canadian Airports Council talks about the potential of facial recognition technology. 0:58
The skies are open but many fliers are fearful, worried that airports and hours confined with strangers inside a plane are just vectors for the virus, creating risks many are not willing to take.
Wanlin Zhong had to fly home last week from Washington, D.C., to China. She arrived at the airport in a mask plus a plastic face shield over top. She was also wearing gloves. As an international student in the U.S., her visa was running out. If not, she said, “I wouldn’t get on a plane, I’d just stay home and not go out.”
Airports and airlines worldwide are struggling to decipher what it will take to restore confidence, rushing to come up with a kind of sanitation security, an overhaul even greater perhaps than the security measures put in place after 9/11.
“The one key characteristic of an airline that’s going to thrive on the other side of this crisis — it’s an airline that can be nimble,” said Josh Earnest, chief communications officer for United Airlines.
With the low volume of travellers, physical distancing in airports is possible now, but imagine what happens when millions return.
“With social distancing of about two metres between passengers,” said Gooch, “it takes about 350 metres just to accommodate the security screening line for one wide-body aircraft.”
Touchless travel
A couple of flights at once would easily jam up an airport concourse, creating just one of a myriad of challenges.
Sanitation is the primary one, say many aviation experts, and futuristic solutions span everything from more touchless travel, avoiding screens that might be infected, to clean portals — scanners that could detect viruses.
In Hong Kong’s airport, cleaners are spraying an antimicrobial coating on the dozens of places a traveller touches most — from escalator handrails