Get ready: long-distance travel may not happen until 2023

The aircraft are sealed and stored at the Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage Facility in Alice Springs, Australia, in October 2020.

Photographer: David Gray / Bloomberg

When coronavirus vaccines started to be launched late last year, there was a palpable sense of excitement. People started browsing travel websites and airlines were optimistic about flying again. Ryanair Holdings Plc even launched a “Jab & Go ”alongside images of young people in their 20s on vacation, with drinks in hand.

It is not working that way.

To begin with, it is unclear whether vaccines really stop travelers from spreading the disease, even if they are less likely to get it. Not even vaccines against the most infectious mutant strains that led Australian governments to the United Kingdom to close, rather than open, borders. An ambitious effort by operators for digital health passports to replace mandatory quarantines that kill the demand for travel is also fraught with challenges and still needs to overcome the World Health Organization.

This gloomy reality pushed expectations of any significant recovery in global travel by 2022. This may be too late to save many airlines with only a few months of cash left. And the delay threatens to kill the careers of hundreds of thousands of pilots, flight crew and airport employees who have been out of work for almost a year. Rather than a return to global connectivity – one of the economic miracles of the jet era – prolonged international isolation seems inevitable.

“It is very important for people to understand that, at the moment, all we know about vaccines is that they will very effectively reduce the risk of serious diseases,” said Margaret Harris, WHO spokeswoman in Geneva. “We have not seen any evidence yet to indicate whether or not they interrupt transmission.”

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To be sure, it is possible that a travel recovery will take place on your own – without the need for vaccine passports. If jabs start to reduce infection and mortality rates, governments can gain enough confidence to reverse quarantines and other border barriers and rely more on passengers’ Covid-19 pre-flight tests.

The United Arab Emirates, for example, has largely eliminated entry restrictions, in addition to the need for a negative test. Although UK regulators have banned Ryanair’s “Jab & Go” ad as misleading, the head of discount airline Michael O’Leary still expects that almost the entire population of Europe will be vaccinated by the end of September. “This is the point at which we are released from these restrictions,” he said. “Short-distance travel will recover strongly and quickly.”

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An international terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport on January 25. Commercial flights worldwide on February 1 reached less than half the pre-pandemic level.

Photographer: Spencer Platt / Getty Images

For now, however, governments remain wary of receiving international visitors and the rules change at the slightest sign of trouble. Witness Australia, which closed its borders with New Zealand last month, after New Zealand reported a Covid-19 case in the community.

New Zealand and Australia, which sought a successful approach aimed at eliminating the virus, both said their borders will not be fully opened this year. Meanwhile, travel bubbles, like the proposal between Asian financial centers in Singapore and Hong Kong, have not yet consolidated. France tightened its international travel rules on Sunday, while Canada is preparing to impose tougher quarantine measures.

“Air traffic and aviation are really below the government’s priority list,” said Phil Seymour, president and chief consulting officer of IBA Group Ltd., a UK-based aviation services company. “It will be a long way out of this.”

The pace of vaccine release is another critical point.

Although the vaccination rate has improved in the United States – the largest air travel market in the world before the virus arrived – inoculation programs are far from the aviation panacea. In some places, they are just one more thing for people to discuss. Vaccine nationalism in Europe has dissolved into discussions about the supply and who should be protected first. The region is also divided over whether a jab should be a ticket for unrestricted travel.

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