Worst case scenario: several airliners go out of business. the remaining ones get a bailout from the gov. 1 to 2 years later, these few carriers will have a massive monopoly and incredible pricing power. Flights costs for consumers will go up and up and up every single year like clockwork, not all at once. But gradually, little by little they will become increasingly profitable like we've never seen before (because in the past we always had competition, that's what keeps prices low). Without competition, flight costs can continue to rise to really high levels.

The most important thing in a market economy (aka economies that are not communist), is competition. Competition is the primary thing that keeps costs low. Without it, we (consumers) are all toast - however it'd be great for the stocks of those few remaining airlines (with enormous upside potential). Flying in airplanes is a mostly ineclastic good. this means, people can't just stop flying. All this is extremely bullish for the remaining airlines, in the long run (2 years+).

>Flying in airplanes is a mostly ineclastic good.

The last couple weeks have shown this to be quite untrue.

That's a short term dip. People may be able to stop flying for a few weeks or months. but, all those businesses will still need people to move around the globe. then again, maybe this will prove to the world how unnecessary all those flights were to begin with.

According to some figures I found with an extremely cursory search, leisure flights account for over half of air travel. So even before we start asking how many business meetings and conferences really require physical presence, there's a vast amount of personal air travel that is largely optional.

If this pandemic leads people to realise that so much flying really isn't necessary, and actually changes long-term behavior, that could be at least one silver lining.

Depending on if those businesses are still around in 6 months.

If the airline profits are incredibly high then someone with a large amount of capital will start their own airline to compete.

Starting a brand-new business to compete with an established monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly that's capital intensive doesn't seem like a thing that's likely to happen.

If people decided to enter markets purely based on profits then shouldn't there be a bunch of competitors for Google's search engine biz?

Well if what people are predicting will happen, then there will be a lot of bankrupt airlines that will have planes being auctioned off.

As to your second part, search engines aren't a high profit business; advertising is.

You do realize that there are lots of low cost carriers that were started to compete with the expensive incumbent airlines?

There will be lots of cheap planes to buy if you want to start competing though.

It depends how essential flights are deemed to be. If people want them and a market exists, fares will be very expensive at first and then eventually normalize as demand increases and capacity scales back up.

Since all of the infrastructure already exists it shouldn't take that long to scale back up.

I would assume a small percentage of people would stick to their new habits but the majority will go back to their old ways when it's over.

Why is this downvoted. bunch of my friends are already trolling for cheap flights.

Have they run out of shit to rub on door handles, y'know they're looking to get Asshole Of The Year by doing the least societally responsible things possible.

Sorry to be crude, but it beggars belief that people can afford flights, realise why they're discounted, and yet be so short sighted.

counting on lockdown to be over in future point when they fly. Worst case they lose( or get a refund) if the lockdown is still on.

I do not know about that but hopefully they realize they can not pack passengers any more for the fear or spreading disease and move back at least to how seating used to be a couple of decades back ... more space rather than less.

The centimeters we're speaking of has no effect at all at how quickly disease spreads, the way the air circulates is more important than your leg room.

Seating like we used to have a few decades back is available. It costs about the same as it used to. People seem to forget how expensive air travel were back in the days, no wonder it was more luxurious.

I haven't seen anywhere suggesting that the transmission vectors between passengers are a major cause of the growth into a pandemic - even if that was the case, I doubt a once in 50 year disease is cause for them to change to a less profitable seating setup the other 49.

There are lots of cases of diseases spreading from one plane passenger to another.

That's part of the reason the airline requires you to sit in allocated seats - so they can notify the people sitting in neighbouring seats if you have a notifiable disease.

My personal hypothesis is the low pressure ultra-low humidity air in planes dries out mucus membranes in the nose and throat making it more likely for airborne things to get in.