Can flying ever be the same?

Just before the pandemic, flying was starting to get a black eyes, here and there, as it was seen as overly polluting and creating a huge carbon footprint per passenger mile. In addition a drastic reduction in vehicular traffic is restoring clean air everywhere.

Today, with passenger air traffic 95% down in America alone, it will take a long time to bring back fliers to sit inside a narrow tube, especially for many long hours, and folks will definitely prefer road trips at first as a mode of evasion.

What’s certain is that international travel that’s likely to be subject to delayed governmental authorizations, will take a very long time before it gains critical mass again.

What will this means to mountain destination resorts like Park City? A tepid summer may be still be followed by a disappointing winter in which a vast majority of visitors may be locals or skiers driving from the nearby Pacific Coast.

What made Park City so hot, just like what made my hometown valley of Morzine, France so busy, was the fly-in market that landed in the nearby airports of Salt Lake City or Geneva, Switzerland, and this way of recreating will take a long time to recover.

To add insult to injury, once back in the air and after “priming the pump” with cheap fares and low jet fuel cost, airlines may have to raise their rates to accommodate less than full loads while discount carriers like Easyjet, might simply disappear.

Finally, companies will discover that video conferencing is going to cut deep into corporate meetings and traveling. Would this usher new technology like small electric airplanes that operate more like taxis or limousines? This is quite possible, but it might take some time.

At any rate, the pre-Covid-19 carefree and profligate air travel might never reappear as we knew it, opening some room to rail, high-speed trains, or better yet, Hyper-loop transportation.