Has The Travel World Stopped Moving Due To Coronavirus?

 We’re baking banana bread, drinking dalgona coffee and guessing gibberish on Instagram. Ludo has become the new national pastime and John Krasinki’s Some Good News is better than any news channel story right now. While we’ve got a lot going on (or nothing at all, no judgments), what are hotels, airlines and travel companies doing? I wanted to know what’s their version of dalgona, so I reached out to a couple of them and spent some hours researching this. Why? Because I’m a curious traveller and it seemed like the right time to discover who has changed their direction of travel due to Coronavirus.

PS: I realise it’s a difficult time for the hospitality and aviation industry. I’m gutted that it’ll cause many to declare bankruptcy and millions will lose jobs in the coming months due to the Coronavirus lockdowns. But I’ve been working with sustainability thought leader Pavan Sukhdev and he tells us that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This is the time for us to regroup and re-strategise, and learn from our past experiences. For travel, I’m hoping it’ll lead to responsible tourism and environment-friendly practices, but more on that here.

This is what I found.

Airlines Have Parked Their Planes

World’s 62% aircrafts are grounded, that’s more than 16,000 planes. It’s difficult to find space for these heavy-duty sky machines, but important to keep them in shape. You can’t just park them and forget about them (like I have done it with my car in the basement, which now needs thorough cleaning). While most planes are standing still at airports, on the runaways and gates and hangar and storage facilities, they still need TLC. But air travel in Coronavirus is still on, mostly for rescue operations and freight transportation.

Amsterdam-based KLM has parked its fleet of more than 200 aircrafts at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, their blog reveals. The airline is not being charged any parking fees by the airport, which is a huge relief because it can be a major expense. The planes of all sizes have been accommodated at the airport–at the runaways and on gates–in a puzzle way, so they don’t close off each other. But they require regular maintenance, which means cleaning, disconnecting batteries, adding lubricants and pumping fuel. KLM is still operating a few flights–they brought back 2,000 Dutch travellers from Australia and the airline has created a cargo bridge between Amsterdam and China to transport medical essentials. The airport has reported that 360 cargo flights per week are landing in the city.

Air Canada has changed configuration of its passenger planes to fit more cargo. Courtesy: Air Canada/Twitter

Air Canada, too, has operated repatriation flights from Peru, Lima and Algeria, among others to bring Canadians back home. They also retrofitted their planes to carry cargo and bring medical supplies to the country. In fact, they flew in honeybees from Hawaii and California to help pollination across the country!

One of my favourite airlines, Etihad has released a video on what they’re up to, which is quite a lot actually. The cabins are getting refreshed–cleaning, shampooing, replacing seat covers and backrest covers (they have done 10,000 so far) and maintenance checks are on. About 80% of their fleet is grounded, and they explain in this video how they’re maintaining the aircraft in the parking mode.