I Just Returned From Los Angeles And The Dwindling Of Passengers Is No Joke

I just returned from Los Angeles on Thursday morning, and let me tell you the lack of passengers in the airports is no joke. This coronavirus has taken its toll on the airline industry, and sooner or later, they might be looking for a government bailout.

Most companies have suspended all non-critical business travel, both domestic and international. Teleconferences are sufficient for most business meetings. Can’t blame folks for not wanting to fly, too expensive, and risk of catching something. It just makes sense to me.

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It will be interesting to see if companies reassess business travel afterward and determine how much of the travel was needed.

I’VE SEEN WITH MY OWN EYES

During my travel to Los Angeles on Wednesday, I talked with an airport employee who wanted to remain anonymous but did relate to me that most high tech companies have severe flight restrictions on all employees. After salaries, facilities, and IT costs travel is the next biggest budget item and a place; the company can save some money immediately, starting now and impact the bottom line. Some large companies spend $1B a year on travel. Those same companies are having employees work from home; they don’t want them traveling either. Defeats the purpose of keeping them safe. Most of these company-level decisions are not being publicized.

I don’t know how much that has anything to do with the lack of trip bookings during this time, but I thought it interesting.

NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE

ForwardKeys, a data firm that tracks more than 17 million business and leisure bookings each day, exclusively told Yahoo Finance’s “On The Move” on Wednesday that U.S. international bookings dropped 36.5% year-over-year for the period of January 20 to March 8.

Most strikingly, in the week of March 2, cancellations for international flights departing from the U.S. outpaced bookings, according to Olivier Ponti, Vice President for ForwardKeys Insights.

“Let’s be clear about this. We’ve never seen anything like this before. This is unprecedented and it’s going extremely, extremely fast,” Ponti said. “The situation is changing at a very fast pace.”

The decline follows a less significant decrease of 19% for U.S. international departures booked between January 20 and February 23. Both sets of data track trends starting the day before the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the first U.S. case of coronavirus on January 21. [Yahoo Finance]

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In trying to gain some sort of perspective about this coronavirus epidemic, I asked a friend of mine what he thought about the airline bookings dropping to all-time lows, and they responded, “Almost all of these trips are not necessary. Have a teleconference instead of a trip, or a telephone call. If anyone thinks they have time to travel, that means they do not have enough to keep them busy on their regular job and should be let go.”

LAID OFF FRIEND IS HAPPY FOR AIRLINE WOES

I couldn’t just let it stop there. I had to ask another friend who was laid off a few weeks ago, what he thought about the lack of flight bookings, and he was elated. He said, “I am glad this is happening to the airlines. For decades, they have been leaching people out of money by charging them any price they wished to levy. They charged people with bags that were only a pound over the limit. They bullied people off the planes when they disagreed with them,” he said. He continued, “Once they charged me $350 for an oversized bag that I was carrying a musical keyboard in when my actual ticket for the round trip ticket cost only $270. So I hope they are going bankrupt and those bully employees at the bag get laid off. What goes around comes around.”

So it seems not a lot of individuals are feeling sorry for the airlines right about now, and they don’t want the government to bail them out.

What are your thoughts about the airline industry woes? Do you think they should receive a bailout for the lack of bookings?

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