scrubbedexpat091

Old co-worker posted about a long haul flight he worked, 22 bags and 27 passengers on a 777, no cargo.

Pulaski

I woke up this morning and having noted a reply from Vitalstatistix in the NZ forum, it suddenly occurred to me - how is international mail going to be transported if passenger air transport is shut down? I know that it's not near the top of issues and priorities, especially as snail-mail is already dying a slow death, but still, I wondered. .... Maybe a contract with UPS and/or FedEx?

civilservant

Wow. Catch a load of the carbon footprint on that flight!

Pulaski

Don't worry, the carbon footprint of global aviation is about to collapse.

markonline1

We are sending out flights with single figure loads. Just heard hours are getting cut down to 30 hours. Really don’t know how long this can go on for. Very worrying times for anyone working in aviation (in fact anyone in a service industry).

scrubbedexpat091

Those kinds of loads don't seem unusual at the moment and airlines are cutting substantially now, some suspending a large % of their schedule so that should make up for it.

A couple Canadian airlines are flying aircraft south empty to repatriate Canadian's on vacation though before completely suspending their international flights. I don't think they were given a choice in the matter and have worded it as partnership with the federal government but I think the federal government likely told the airlines they can't strand Canadians they took to foreign destinations and not exactly the partnership the PR teams want you to think it is.

Air Canada will be safe, the government will bail them out/take ownership if necessary to keep them living, but the other airlines are at a high risk of going under, but Air Canada has been well managed and appears to have decent cash on hand so they may get through this okay. I don't know if Porter will be able to survive, the government may bail out some of the northern airlines if necessary as those airlines are a life link to the people of the north.

robin1234

We flew Porter, Ottawa to Chicago via Toronto City. Amazingly good flights, excellent service. Landing and taking off at Toronto City in a blizzard It’d be a pity if they don’t survive.

scrubbedexpat091

If cargo airlines keep flying mail can shift over to them, USPS for example already has contracts with Fedex and others in addition to passenger airlines, but I would suspect mail will slow eventually as passenger airlines cut back. Snail mail isn't really dying, its letter mail that is dying but parcels are increasing so in the end many postal systems are busier than ever.

Pulaski

By "snail mail", I only meant "letter mail" - I am only used to "snail mail" being used in disparaging comparisons of actual letters to the boom in email over the past 25 years, not to "mail including parcels". Obviously the parcel delivery business is thriving.

scrubbedexpat091

Looks like Air Tahiti Nui broke a distance record due to this virus.

"On March 14, French airline Air Tahiti Nui flew the longest ever scheduled passenger flight by distance -- transiting 9,765 miles across the world from Papeete, in Tahiti, French Polynesia, to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport."

Previous record was held by Singapore Airlines on their Singapore and Newark covering a distance of 9,534 miles.

scrubbedexpat091

Porter Airlines in Canada suspending service effective end of day Friday, hoping to resume service June 1.

Delta is parking 600 aircraft and cutting capacity further, system wide capacity cut of 70% and international flying will be cut 80%. Delta estimates March revenue will fall $2 billion over March 2019 and expects April to be worse.

10,000 Delta employees have agreed to take unpaid leaves.

Accelerating retirement of MD80/90 and 767.

Company will reduce costs where possible, all executives are taking pay cuts, some up to 100% pay cut. Will defer non-essential maintenance which means they wont be fixing things like coffee makers, TV screens and such, they will only do maintenance required to keep the planes airworthy and safe, maintenance on luxury items like entertainment, internet I presume and such will defer.

scrubbedexpat091

Pulaski

To me, "scheduled flight" means that I know where it starts and ends, and where it will stop en route, at the time I book the flight. This flight does not appear to meet that definition, as the decision to fly non-stop was taken, presumably only shortly ahead of departure, based on the light load and, presumably, favourable weather patterns.

scrubbedexpat091

Looks like Compass Airlines will close its doors. They are a regional airlines who provided service for Delta Airlines and American Airlines, Delta had terminated their contract with Compass prior to all this, and American is cancelling most contract flying so Compass has lost all its flying, so essentially out of business, Trans States Airlines also a regional airline (owned by the same people who own Compass) is pushing up their previously announced closure of end of 2020 to next month.

I would expect other regional who are not wholly owned by a mainline carrier to end up in the same boat.

Steerpike

There seems to be an awful lot of planes in the sky at this exact moment, looking at this wonderful site:
https://www.flightradar24.com/48.72,-57.63/6 or just ...
https://www.flightradar24.com/
I see tons of flights from the US to UK in the air right now, and many European destinations, as well as (Eg) Miami to Moscow, JFK to Moscow, Atlanta to Doha, New York to Delhi, Warsaw to JFK, SFO to Delhi, Tel Aviv to SFO, SFO to Singapore, Nairobi to SFO, Dubai to SFO, JFK to Belgrade, JFK to Istanbul, etc etc. I was under the false impression that the the US had shut down travel to/from many countries? Weirdest example - JFK to Rome - Flight AZ609/ AZA60M Alitalia - in progress as I type ... How come we are allowing an Alitalia flight to operate ... ? Could this be a one-off flight to repatriate Italians perhaps?