According to a recent World Tourism Forum Institute report, 60% of frequent flyers expect to return to the sky over the next six months. The survey was carried out using the company’s database, which consists of over 200,000 frequent flyer options from all over the world. Before the pandemic, 73 % of the respondents took over three journeys a year and 38% flew 6 or more times; after the COWID 19 crisis was announced as a pandemic and health emergency in mid-March, 84% of the flyers did not float.
‘The airline industry should have a great number of air passengers ready to start flying again’ said WTFI President Bulut Bağcı. “The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged global aviation in the last 4 months, with fewer passengers, work losses, grounded flights, and delayed or cancelled flights orders.”
Of the people planning to travel frequently in the next six months, 63 percent plan to travel personally, 10 percent are for business and 27 percent for both. Two thirds of those who travel for fun take vacations or holidays and one third of them engage in an event such as graduation, marriage or anniversaries.
“The data show that people have cabin fever after months of quarantine and restricted movement and want a holiday,” Bağcı added. “But business journeys would be anemic, possibly due to continuing restrictions on travel and the widespread use of video conferencing and other remote working technologies.”
The anticipated rise in flight however has high expectations for passengers, with almost all respondents classifying as social distance, face masks for crews and passengers, availability of hand sanitizers, good aircraft desinfection procedures and the rise in the use of touchless technology such as facial recognition, as required to create confidence.
“Most flyers want social space, clean, face masks and empty midrange seats,” Bağcı said. “But they want to increase contactless technology in the check-in and security lines at the airports to help prevent the virus from spreading.”
86 percent of flyers have identified contactless technology as necessary to avoid the spread of COVID-19 and most want to see COVID-19 at check-in, baggage drop, boarding and flight safety screening. Sixty-eight percent claimed that the pandemic would minimize privacy issues regarding biometry, such as facial recognition and make application of technology more appropriate in daily life.
