AIR TRANSPORT Air travel post-Covid-19

Welcome to the 'new normal'​

Masks, middle seats kept clear and ultraviolet light cleaning? ALAN DRON examines the measures that are set to be introduced as the air transport industry grapples with the challenges of transporting passengers in the post-Covid-19 era.

The worst of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic may be behind us by the time these words are read but the effects of the disease are likely to linger in the commercial aviation industry for months, if not years.

Those airlines that survive will undoubtedly be financially weaker than before and will have to instil confidence in the public to encourage them to fly once again. Airports will also have to convince people that their facilities are safe to use. What will air travel look like in the coming years?

It seems likely – at least in the short term – that passengers and crews will have to get used to a new set of pre-flight health requirements, in much the same way as they had to become accustomed to a sharp increase in security checks post-9/11.

How long these requirements will remain may depend on how quickly a reliable vaccine for the novel coronavirus becomes available and can be widely rolled out. This is likely to take some time and vaccinating huge numbers of people worldwide is problematical.Also, the environmental issues that preoccupied so many people in 2019 may have temporarily faded into the background but have not disappeared. The reluctance to fly for ecological reasons, when combined with fear of contracting the coronavirus on journeys, is potentially a double disincentive to travel by air.

Above: Delta Airlines recently established a ‘global cleanliness’ division which in their words, ‘is dedicated to innovating and evolving our already high cleanliness standards.’ Delta Lower: Honeywell’s aero UV Treatment System. Honeywell

A return to skies​

Most airlines plan to restart services through June and July, although perhaps only at 15%-30% of their previous capacity. Some CEOs, notably Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, have said they will tempt people back into the air with ultra-low fares. It seems certain that many people, fed up with government lockdowns over the previous three months, will leap at the chance to grab a break in different surroundings.

How long this initial burst of activity will last is one of the major unknowns in the airline-passenger equation. The general feeling at the time of writing was that companies, desperate to rebuild their finances, would increase fares above 2019 levels once the initial burst of cut-price fares was over.

If shrunken fleets mean that overcapacity, especially in Europe, becomes a thing of the past, then the laws of supply and demand will mean that passengers can expect to pay more for that business trip to Frankfurt or that holiday break in Paphos.

Adapting to comedown

How can airlines and airports respond to this existential threat? The industry is clear that recovery will not be rapid, with most airline CEOs estimating between two and five years for traffic to return to its pre-Covid-19 levels. That timespan will see many airlines disappear for ever and even the best-run are likely to emerge from the pandemic with smaller fleets. Ironically, in many cases it will be the older, state-owned carriers that survive, as governments pump in funding to allow their national airlines to survive, while privately-owned companies may struggle to raise money from the banks.

It is already clear, however, that limiting the spread of the virus through the enforcement of social distancing – both in airports and on board aircraft – will be a non-starter as soon as passenger numbers begin to ramp up from the minimal levels anticipated in the first few weeks of a return to service. London Heathrow’s CEO, John Holland-Kaye, made this clear in an interview at the start of May.

Airlines have scrambled to cope with the initial effects of Coronavirus.

Fly the healthy skies

While airports would introduce health screening and passengers would have to wear masks, introducing social distancing was “physically impossible” with any volume of passengers, he said. “Social distancing does not work in any form of public transport, let alone aviation.”

Ryanair’s O’Leary has ridiculed suggestions that airlines keep middle seats vacant, noting that this measure would not only fail to provide the necessary two metres’ distancing, but that it would be economically unviable for airlines.

Peter Hodkinson, of the RAeS’ Aerospace Medicine Group, believes there may be a multilayered approach to making airports and airliners safe for travel, including passengers potentially taking their own temperature before leaving their homes, wearing masks throughout the journey and having their temperatures taken as they arrive at the airport.

The last of these options is potentially fraught with difficulties, given the real risk of temperature-measuring equipment giving false positives on individuals, as people’s temperatures do fluctuate naturally. Similarly, there is also the risk of false negatives, with asymptomatic carriers of the virus failing to trigger an alert.

Several groups have warned of the problems that may arise if an individual arrives at an airport feeling perfectly healthy, only to be told that they are not allowed to fly. This could lead to heated arguments and risk of disturbances if, for example, a business executive is balked from flying for an important meeting, or if one member of a family group going on holiday is told they cannot travel.

Above: Heathrow Airport is trailing thermal screening. Heathrow Airport DLR Germany’s DLR is measuring the circulation of airflow in aircraft cabins. DLR

Defining good flight health

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have issued a joint document defining measures to assure the health safety of air travellers and aviation personnel once airlines resume regular flight schedules.

These include observing physical distancing wherever possible, wearing a medical face mask to protect other passengers and practising scrupulous and frequent hand hygiene.

They warn, however, that ‘In the context of these measures, an increase in cases of unruly or disruptive passengers should be expected, either prior to departure or in-flight. This may be due to passengers not wishing to sit next to each other or accusing each other of not following the rules. There is a strong potential for conflict if it is not managed properly.’

“A lot of thought has to be put in as to how passengers are dealt with if they are found to have a high temperature,” commented Christine Druce, Senior Development Manager (baggage) at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport and a member of the RAeS Air Transport Specialist Group. “What if it is a child or dependent person? What if the person is in transit and not expecting to ‘land’ in that country? What does that then mean for visas? If the passengers are prevented from continuing their journey, what happens to their bags?”

Other possibilities for airport precautions, said Terry Buckland, Chairman of the RAeS’s Flight Operations Group, include tests (perhaps swab or blood) being carried out on passengers as they arrive at an airport and before they get on board but this is unlikely to be a viable option at major hubs due to weight of numbers. A further option would be to train special sniffer dogs to detect ill travellers; canines have been shown to be remarkably effective at such work. However, the amount of time needed to put such a scheme in place also probably renders it unworkable. 

Airlines may stress their new, more rigorous, cleaning regimes over coming months, in order to encourage skittish travellers back on board. During the worst of the pandemic, for example, Etihad Airways produced a video extensively describing the enhanced cleaning regime it had put in place.

Many other airlines have gone down a similar route but some have remained resistant. Alex Sahni, CEO of Turkey-based Virus-Guard, reported that the CEO of one major Asian airline told him that it was “too troublesome” to disinfect his fleet of 200-plus aircraft, despite the advent of ‘foggers’ that can produce a disinfectant mist that can cover all cabin surfaces in a widebody aircraft in around 30 minutes.

More generally, however, demand for Sahni’s product, which the firm says kills both bacteria and viruses for up to 10 days, has rocketed. A few months ago, Virus-Guard was producing just five litres of its eponymous product a day. At the height of the pandemic, production leapt to 5,000 litres daily and Sahni found himself fielding phone calls ‘wanting delivery today’.

A major problem for Sahni in recent years has been that cabin cleaning tends to fall between the remits of different airline departments, such as engineering, in-flight services and groundhandling. This can make it difficult to locate the relevant airline official who has the authority to get a new product on board. That problem is likely to disappear as airlines make intensified efforts to keep their cabin interiors safe.

However, Sahni feared that, while airlines are currently placing great emphasis on cabin disinfection, that attention to detail would slide once memory of the pandemic started to fade, a point echoed by Buckland. “It’s only human nature,” he said. “Unless it’s rigidly enforced by the regulators with spot checks.”

US Govt

Incorporating cleaning schedules

Just as every commercial airliner had a maintenance log, each should now have a cleanliness log, noting when a deep clean or disinfection procedure was carried out and signed by an official who would be held to account for the log’s accuracy, and that level of cleanliness should not be confined to the passenger cabin, said Buckland. “At a very basic level, the flight decks will have to be thoroughly clea=ned between crew changes.” According to the Toulouse Academy of Aviation, Buckland said, there have been many complaints that this is not being done. “I remember, for quite a lot of my career, being quite dismayed at how filthy flight decks were.”

Air India

One Airbus pilot and member of the RAeS Flight Operations Group reported that: “The loos are being cleaned properly by contractors during turnarounds. Although they clean the flight deck too, we tend to do our own thorough cleaning of the pilot interface using the various materials provided. (However) some areas (eg certain elements of the pilot interface) are off-limits to us and must be cleaned by the engineers.”

Buckland added that both short-haul and longhaul operators would face problems when it came to deep-cleaning or disinfecting aircraft.

Short-haul airlines – particularly low-cost carriers that relied on turnrounds of as little as 30 minutes between flights – would be unable to carry out any meaningful cleaning between sectors, although their aircraft tended to be on the ground for a longer period overnight, giving ground crews the chance to carry out deep-cleaning procedures.

Long-haul carriers, by contrast, frequently operated through the night and ironically often had less time on the ground than short-haul carriers over a 24-hour cycle, with perhaps only a two-hour turnaround at their destination. That meant, he said, that “We’re going to have to disrupt the schedules to some extent, because deep cleaning may need three to four hours.”

With this in mind, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has set up a new section on its website, advising airlines on the best ways to keep their cabins clean. There is a need to ensure that all products used for disinfection do not degrade cabin materials, for example, or react adversely with each another.

Peter Forbes, Director of the specialist UK aviation consultancy, Alan Stratford and Associates and a member of the RAeS Air Transport Group, believes that there is likely to be a plethora of operational measures until some consensus is reached on passenger acceptability.

“Given that there is only limited available scientific data on the risk of transmission of Covid-19 during flight, airlines have largely been free to choose the appropriate measures which they think will make passengers feel safe. While the compulsory wearing of face masks is now fairly widespread amongst most European airlines, some, including British Airways, leave this to the passenger’s discretion.

Are you sitting safely?

There are also differing views on the seating configuration with many airlines, including Easyjet, leaving the middle seat free or, as in the case of Lot Polish Airlines, devising staggered seating arrangements to increase social distancing. In the medium term, it is possible that airlines will introduce glass divider screens or perhaps a so-called ‘Janus’ seating arrangement in which passengers in the aisle and window seat face forward, while those in the middle seat face to the rear. Ultimately, however, airlines will need to balance these measures against any possible financial losses from reduced load factors, particularly if the global economy moves into recession.”

There has also been talk of passengers being compelled to place much of their carry-on baggage in the hold, to minimise infection being passed to other passengers who touch each other’s cases in the overhead lockers.

Enforcing such a measure is likely to be highly unpopular, as many travellers have learned to pack their requirements into a carry-on bag over the past decade in order to avoid checked-in baggage charges and value being able to exit an airport swiftly without having to wait for their cases at a baggage carousel.

People increasingly want to keep their valuables close to them, with their list of valuables having extended in recent years from passports, cash or mobile phones to a panoply of electronic devices.

Insisting more luggage is checked in poses risks, said Buckland, if that means passengers placing lithium battery-powered electronic devices in the hold.

“If a lithium battery gets crushed, the chance of thermal runaway is very high,” he noted. While a smouldering smartphone or laptop could be dealt with in the cabin by flight attendants, that option was not open if a fire started in the underfloor hold. If airlines insisted on passengers placing their luggage in the hold, that was likely to require a major re-education campaign and perhaps a move towards allowing passengers to take a separate, electronics-only, container into the cabin to remove this safety threat.

The new normal airport

On the ground, meanwhile, airports will have to respond to customer concerns with cleaning regimes that are both thorough and visible. Particular attention will be paid to frequent cleaning of areas that are touched, such as escalator rails, door handles and self check-in terminals.

There will be increased attention paid to reducing touchpoints (literally) in the check-in and boarding process. Expect a boost for biometric technologies, as a person’s unique facial characteristics are used as their ID, rather than handing over documents to officials during the boarding or immigration processes.

SITA’s Vice President, Portfolio Management, Andrew O’Connor, certainly believes that biometrics will play a much greater role in air travel. “Biometrics and digital identity management will be fundamental capabilities in this touchless journey,” he said in an 18 April blog. “Their advantage is that they can be used on- and off-site, so we’ll start seeing more check-in outside of airports.”

This, of course, will demand greater security measures around such electronic IDs. “We’re likely to see blockchain technology evolve, giving us enhanced reconciliation and data sharing of passengers records, for example,” said O’Connor. “We’ll also see advances in the adoption of SelfSovereign Identity, a lifetime portable identity.”

One area that has been criticised for lack of cleanliness in recent years has been the plastic security trays on which passengers place their carry-on bags, shoes and belts.

At the height of the 2016 winter ‘flu season, researchers from the Finnish Institute of Health and the UK’s University of Nottingham found that half of the trays at Helsinki’s Vantaa airport were contaminated with traces of common cold and ‘flu viral genetic material. while this differed from the actual viruses, the researchers recommended that passengers should clean their hands with sanitiser before and after security checks, to minimise the risk of infection. (By contrast, they found no such contamination in the airport’s toilet surfaces.)

Several methods of cleaning security trays have been mooted, including the use of ultra-violet (UV) light as the trays return from the stacking slots at the end of the security channel for reuse by the next passengers.

UV light is also being used by a new generation of autonomous cleaning robots programmed to patrol a terminal and constantly clean floor surfaces; such machines have recently been introduced at Doha’s Hamad International Airport.

Confidence for a cleaner future

One small, beneficial result may come from the crisis. Although the cleaning standards of some airlines may slip from the high standards that are currently being implemented, it seems likely they will have to be maintained at a higher level than has previously been the case with some carriers, in order to retain confidence among the travelling public. As Rick Lockhart, President of Floridabased Skypaxxx Interior Repairs, which distributes anti-microbial carpet tiles put it: “Airlines can talk all about fogging and wiping but if you get on an aircraft and you see gum ground into the carpet, you’re going to assume the aircraft is dirty.”

Whatever measures are adopted by the industry to get people flying again, one thing is certain: regulations must be coordinated and harmonised at the global level. Failure to do so will result in a mish-mash of regulations that will cause confusion among passengers and further delay what already appears certain to be a slow return to something approaching normality in the commercial aviation industry.