Newss from The Star – link to story
By Kevin McGran, Staff Reporter ~ Tue., April 21, 2020
Passengers on Air Canada and WestJet started adjusting this week to another new reality of air travel: wearing masks for the entire duration of their flights.
Getting asked about their health, getting boxed meals before they board and having very little interaction with flight attendants are more examples of the COVID-19-related changes that are coming at breakneck speed as the Canadian airline industry is forced to reinvent itself on the fly.
“Is that going to be sufficient?” asked professor Frederic Dimanche, the director of the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism at Ryerson University. “They’re going to have to reinvent the way they operate, in the same way restaurants are going to as well.”
So far, there’s been little reported pushback from passengers over the new safety measures.
In addition to the mask requirement, in-flight meal service has been cut, with meals instead handed out as passengers board. And WestJet recently followed Delta’s lead in declining to seat anyone in a middle seat, and won’t let passengers pair up unless they booked their tickets together. Some European airlines are even thinking about removing rows.
On Tuesday, another change: Air Canada announced it would temporarily suspend all flights to the United States starting April 26, an outgrowth of the agreement between the governments of Canada and the United States to extend border restrictions by an additional 30 days.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the airline industry has been devastated, and however and whenever emergency measures pass, the airlines are facing a long, difficult recovery.
“Their market has collapsed, and all airlines have slashed their flying by at least 90 per cent, and they still have significant overhead costs,” said Fred Lazar, associate professor of economics at the Schulich School of Business at York University. “They’re bleeding money quite profusely.”