I think about the depression era behaviors that stuck around in my grandparents as a good example of what to expect coming out of this pandemic. They learned certain things out of necessity and it changed their worldview on everything from darning their own socks to what ingredients they'd use in their cooking.
I expect that many of us will carry similar behavioral scars for years or decades later - ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports. I don't know what all those behaviors will be, but there's no way we avoid carrying at least a few with us.
I think it is totally futile to try to predict these things. Of course, making pronouncements as in the original post is insane, but enough people delight in this misery to put it on the front page of HN.
I’ve been thinking along these lines, but with a twist. I’m half British and half Italian, raised and resided in the latter most of my life. As I’m sure you know, both of these countries have been hit very severely by the pandemic, and Italy in particular is probably the epitome of the “hard lockdown” — or at least, it’s been one of the more prominent cases because it was the first Western country to make that move and the example everybody else seems to have drawn inspiration from. People are clearly very deeply affected on all levels by this. People have been locked indoors for, well, months now and society has become more regimented than it had ever been. Italians, a stereotypical gregarious population (though that of course varies from person to person and has some regional variation — I’m from the slightly less personally expansive North) have become accustomed to wearing masks in public and keeping strict distances from one another. ‘Touchy-feely’ has been revised to standoffish. There’s reports of people having panic attacks if they see somebody without a mask. Stuff like that (of course it’s hard to tell how prevalent that is, because broadcast & social media tend to blow such episodes out of all proportion).
And now for the twist: as chance would have it, I am working in Malta (a small independent island off the bottom of Sicily, the EU’s smallest member state), so I’m actually abroad in this crucial time and experiencing a very ‘light’ experience: 440 or so cases on a population of half a million, three or four confirmed deaths. We’ve been in a “light lockdown” since sometime in late march. People basically started working from home of their own initiative and/or businesses decided to implement this ahead of governmental recommendations to that effect; bars, restaurants, and non-essential shops are shut and those that are considered essential admit only a few people at the time. People largely give each other a wider berth and aren’t seen congregating in more than the governmentally mandated three people per cluster, but it’s all rather lax, and seems to have worked (fortunately).
So I can’t help but speculate about how odd everything will seem when I will finally go back to visit Milan: everybody back there has gone through a perspective-altering collective trauma that I haven’t experienced. I can imagine myself ending up doing something that has suddenly become a faux pas (or at the very least outmoded) such as putting forward my hand to give a shake, or something gauche such as (comparatively) ‘looming’ over somebody in a queue. I’m quite disturbed by this prospect, to be very honest. There might also be a bit of “survivor guilt” rolled in too (by a quirk of chance, I avoided the ordeal everybody else had to go through).
We’re not five months into the Twenties yet and things are definitely very different from what I had anticipated.
Islands and countries such as Australia are having a completely different experience, as they can track incoming cases and with good quarantine practices genuinely create a safe bubble for all residents. Watch what happens with New Zealand, Iceland and other small islands like yours and the Canaries etc - you'll be out of lockdown while everyone agrees to be very strict on what enters the country, something continental countries can't do.
That kind of underscores my point, though, doesn’t it: I’ve had a very atypical experience compared to those of my compatriots (on both sides, Britain being an island but having massively bungled its management in the early stages). I’ve been working from home for six weeks and endure the annoyance of joining a short and diffuse queue to get into the local convenience store, and am at liberty to take a daily stroll in excess of a dozen kilometres; they’ve had their whole existence disrupted (they’ve lost jobs) and loved ones (I recently graduated from “know people who’ve lost their job because of this” to “know people who’ve lost a relative because of this”). It’s truly horrifying, and I’ve experienced it only vicariously, from afar.
No we can’t: commercial (passenger) flights were suspended on 20th march and though there’s various repatriation schemes running in both directions (in and out), pretty much everything is suspended.
There were no significant threats in the West before corona to justify high level of hygiene. How many people does the average person know who died of something preventable with good hygiene?
Secondly, increased hygiene has it's own set of problems. You dont kill just corona, you also kill the countless harmless pathogens, but who are important to keep your immune system on its toes. Its suspected that the reason there are so many allergic persons in the West lately it's the increasingly sanitized world around us.
That's what I've always done my entire life even before the virus - the outside is gross (basic things like knowing people use the washroom and don't wash their hands and then touch knobs you do, etc). How did you not?
...and you didn't do that already? I'm not being funny, but since I was a little kid I was always taught that as soon as you get home you take off your shoes and go wash your hands. I actually do the same at work where the first thing I do is go wash my hands after arriving at the office. I think I assumed everyone did the same already.
I'm right with you -- I used to only wash my hands when I felt like I could've touched something gross, or when using the bathroom. And before cooking for other people. It wasn't something I really thought of too often.
Now, anytime I do anything, I wash my hands. Feels weird not to. Don't know if that is ever going away since I'm doing it instinctually already now
...which, if it turns into a cultural habit, will both protect against getting infected but also make future humans more susceptible to diseases since their immune systems have not had enough exposure. It might also lead to an increase in allergies, as can already be seen in the higher prevalence of such in modern clean suburban housing projects versus the countryside. A bored immune system will find other things to attack, including harmless agents or even the body it is part of.
>ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports
Wow it only took 3 months of brainwashing to permanently change your subconcious behaviour and make you paranoid of other people and the outside world? I sure hope most of humanity is at least slightly stronger willed then that and doesn't now live like a scared rabbit.
Second, yes, three months of heavily restricted movement, limited access to resources (from flour to dental care), to knowing people who are sick, dying, or at high risk has absolutely changed my perspective.
Knowing that we've got several more months of this ahead, this is a significant portion of our lives. One way to think about it is that most of us will have spent whole integer percentage of our lives in this situation. Of course that's going to impact the way we observe and interact with the world.
> Configurations are likely to change as carriers try to squeeze more money from customers.
If that’s not what they were already doing, I wonder what that will look like.
Anyway, it’s not necessarily bad. Air travel was way too cheap considering its externalities.
I know someone who _commutes_ by plane because their office is two countries over (in Europe), they don’t want to move to the much higher COL country where the job is, and the office won’t let them be remote with the same salary. So every week twice a week, they fly. And it’s still cheaper than living next to the office. This insanity and many like it must stop, it’s so much pollution for completely stupid reasons.
They fly on Sunday afternoon and leave on Friday after work, so they spent maybe 48h total with their family. They have an apartment rented next to the office. It’s still cheaper apparently because they bring their own food for the week to avoid spending money on it here, the kid goes to school in the other country, and the partner doesn’t work. Oh and the airport is 90 minutes away (by train thankfully) from the office.
It makes total sense to me seeing as I know people who commute to London twice a week, use Airbnb from Monday to Friday and they have or rent a house elsewhere. It's still a lot cheaper than acually renting a place full time in London
I know someone who does that too, it is totally bonkers to me that she flies twice a week just to get to an office in a different country. She also told me (before the virus already) that she really doesn't need to be there, she could just as well do a conference call once a week.
I have a hunch that once the severity of the pandemic eases, we may see an increase in car journeys for holidays, particularly for continental Europe. Why? Many people will remain cautious about travelling with strangers in closely packed airplane cabins or even train carriages. The alternative is to travel by car. But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car and so this may affect where people travel. Will densely packed cities lose out as holiday destinations?
Governments want people to travel because tourism and hospitality employs thousands of people and brings substantial money into the economy for almost every country in the world.
I'm sceptical the airline industry, which has thrived with low fares, particularly in Europe, will raise prices. I expect they will do everything to tempt passengers to return to the air with low fares. Will that be enough to tempt us back on board?
That’s a good point, but I’m also starting to speculate whether, when the infection rates and (crucially) hospital occupation rates diminish, we will see some people deliberately seeking to get infected so as to gain immunity whilst the risks are low, specifically, when they can be reasonably certain that if they experience severe symptoms they’ll have a place in an ICU to receive intensive care. This might sound unsound (pardon the awkward phrasing) but it’s not necessarily irrational given the perceived advantages of immunity and the diminished perceived risks. It might not even be socially undesirable either, as a kind of “low burn” through the population, or at least it’s sturdier members, might be seen as building up that “herd immunity” which makes it difficult for the virus to reach the higher-risk individuals.
I haven't seen anything confirming that, either weakly or strongly. It's unlikely to be true, since most diseases don't behave that way, but we'll see.
All we really know is that the current corona tests don't seem to be very accurate.
They are correct: there is no evidence specifically of COVID immunity after infection. There's a very (very) high likelihood based on everything we know about humans and viruses (corona flavored or otherwise), but it's fair to expect a study confirming as much before making a global public health policy decision of that magnitude.
As others have noted, “not confirmed” does not mean that we have to take all that we know about viruses and immunology and trash it (yet). In all likelihood in due course it shall be confirmed. There’s no reason to believe this virus is fundamentally different from any other.
Seems like a pretty risky thing to do. Not only to yourself since you don’t know in advance if you’re going to have symptoms or not (risking permanent injury and death) but to your family and wider society. It would only take a few people doing this and not adequately self isolating for the weeks required to get better to start spreading the virus again quickly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m most definitely not advocating it. But keep in mind there’s folks considering shooting up bleach because Podium Dementor mused about it ‘sarcastically’. People’s cognitive processes surprise, sometimes.
Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if the next “superspreader” event after this first set of lockdowns is caused by someone who deliberately infected themselves.
1000 miles one way takes about 15 hours at highway speeds. It's not that different from a transcontinental flight plus the time it takes to travel to and from the airport, wait at the airport, etc. You're also free to bring as much luggage as your vehicle will allow, stop and rest at any time, or go sightseeing along the way. On top of that, the seats are more comfortable, and it might even be cheaper for a family of four.
The only downside is that someone has to drive the car for all those hours. As soon as that problem is fixed, I don't see myself traveling by air at all unless I have to cross an ocean.
>I have a hunch that once the severity of the pandemic eases, we may see an increase in car journeys for holidays, particularly for continental Europe.
>But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car and so this may affect where people travel.
As an American, I would routinely drive 3+ hours to visit family in the same state, or 6+ hours across several states from my childhood home to university. Growing up in the Midwest, I got used to measuring distance in hours of highway travel time. I wouldn't make those trips every week or every month, but 5-6 times in a year would not have been unusual. I know many people who drove cross-country when moving from East to West Coast (a multi-day road trip), or vice-versa. Road trips in general are firmly rooted in the American experience, as captured in films such as 'National Lampoon's Vacation' or 'Little Miss Sunshine.'
Perhaps post-pandemic Europe will see its own road trip renaissance, complete with motels, minivans, and roadside attractions?
"Road trips in general are firmly rooted in the American experience"
Road trips in Europe don't quite capture people's imagination in the same way as the Great American road trip. I think it might have something to do with driving across borders - it's exciting but also possibly stressful having to drive in a different, unfamiliar country.
Camping is already popular in some European countries. There are lots of camps with modern facilities so its popularity may grow even more.
I wish they would simply remove every second seat and charge twice the price. That would mean the same revenue for the airline and a much more comfortable flight for me. Win win.
And they would probably still have some wiggle room. Because 50% less customers would mean at least some reduction in costs.
What about the HN gang? Would you keep flying if prices doubled?
I would say every one has at least a 50% reduction in the number of people close to them. On top of that, minimum distance and average distance both went up. I wouldn't be surprised if the infection rate in the second example is only 10% of the first.
Pair that with everyone wearing a mask. I have read that the infection rate goes down by 95% between two people wearing a mask in comparison to two peole wearing no mask.
Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board.
I think instead of trying to wait it out and print money, we should start to engineer ourselfes out of this crisis.
That would hold true if the virus would behave like a gas that dissolves in air. But it is carried by droplets that fall to the ground.
I would think there is not more wind in an airplane then in a supermarket. So the droplets that carry the virus should fall down to the ground in a similar fashion.
Not sure where you are flying. In Europe, there usually is no such option. Most of the time, all you can do is pay an additional €30 or so and get a seat with more legroom. And that's it.
That’s true if you’re flying on budget airlines like Ryanair or Easyjet, but nearly all the legacy carriers offer a business class “cabin” where the seats are usually the same as in economy but middle seats are kept free. That’s a 33% reduction in density, not 50%, but it’s not far off.
Those business class seats on "legacy carriers" are not available for double the price. Try some flight searches and compare direct one way flights between two cities in Europe. First of all, you will have a hard time finding a direct flight by Lufthansa for example. Secondly, a Lufthansa business flight will usually be over 5x the price of a Ryan air flight.
Oh yeah, I doubt you’ll find business class tickets that are anywhere near as cheap as twice the price of the average Ryanair flight, but as someone who is in the lucky situation to be able to avoid airlines that I find actively unpleasant, the price hop from economy to business needn’t be that large. It depends on the airline, route and dates of course, but I’ve seen (and bought) short-haul business class tickets that were less than 150% the price of economy.
Exactly, I am(or well, have been) flying very regularly and I've never been on a plane with a business class, much less first class. The best upgrade is an extra legroom seat.
Only for domestic flights, I suppose? For me, double the price on an intercontinental flight (where leg space really matters) only gets me to premium economy. First class is closer to 3x-3.5x the price.
American tried this a few years ago with "more legroom throughout coach" back in 2005-ish and it nearly bankrupted them. People flatly and absolutely refuse to pay more than the bare minimum to fly places. This will not change once the pandemic panic dies down.
I'd pay a bit more for transcontinental flying but, like, I'm very much in the minority and I fly enough to get free upgrades most of the time anyways.
I think it's self-selecting: the ones who fear flying won't fly no matter how many seats are aboard, and the ones who don't, don't care so much about the social distancing. Consider United's new aspirational social distancing program [1] where they don't do anything but block seat selection until check-in, so you can see who's next to you when you do, I think. It's such a non-policy it's kind of unclear.
> People flatly and absolutely refuse to pay more than the bare minimum to fly places
This is too facile a take, given the existence of Business and Premium Economy.
I think the Asian low-cost carriers probably have it right with very very cheap basic seats, and then the ability to eke out the consumer surplus with reasonably priced “upgrades”. Air Asia’s “hot seats” have a tiny bit more leg room and are charged accordingly. I paid VietJet $6 for premium check-in, and it felt like the future.
Anyway, I suspect the very blunt approach of flight aggregators showing you cheapest first without clearly surfacing comfort factors cause what you describe, rather than an inherent unwillingness to pay among consumers.
Yes and no. It depends who's paying. For the most part leisure travelers aren't going to pay for anything other that basic economy. The basic economy experiment bears out that thesis: legacy airlines wanted passengers to pay more than LCC fares they had to compete with -- so they created an ostensibly painful and unattractive product in BE to encourage people to pay a tiny amount more for anything. Ultimately nobody did, and they felt they had to remove those restrictions -- and indeed most basic economy restrictions have been since lifted. The whole experiment ultimately cost airlines hundreds of millions of dollars.
Flight aggregators actually switched to providing more of this comfort information (especially Google Flights) specifically because of BE but it wasn't enough to save BE.
Business is paid for by businesses, and premium economy is paid for by, uh, cheap businesses. I think PE was brought in so in times of austerity businesses could avoid negative press associated with buying business-class airfare but still wanted to provide their employees a modicum of comfort so they could hit the ground running off the back of their flights.
LCCs are interesting, because I would argue they support my case: people won't pay more than the bare minimum fare for a flight. They may pay small amounts for comfort upgrades but the butt in seat is a commodity. Hence, legacy carriers who try and cover their costs of 50% less density in coach are going to get their lunch eaten by LCCs who don't as the pricing disparity grows larger.
> Business is paid for by businesses, and premium economy is paid for by, uh, cheap businesses.
I think this is probably wrong, but admit I don’t have the numbers to back it up. Last few years I’ve flown ~100 sectors in J and ~20 in PE, mostly intercontinental, and my impression is that there’s a strong showing of leisure travellers, based on the large number of couples and families. Could be expats with decent packages tho.
> LCCs are interesting, because I would argue they support my case
I think they bolster equally well the hypothesis that people will pay more, but they are guided to the cheapest option by Google Flights and so on, and then don’t price compare add-ons. Hard to know without hard data.
SouthWest would certainly agree with you, which is why they de-listed themselves from all the major OTAs a few years ago. That was before the UI updates for basic economy, though, so it's hard to say if that changed anything -- but of course they haven't been back.
Any increase in price leads to some people deciding to skip the flight entirely. You might only need to raise prices by 30% percent or so to have a half-empty plane, if your customers are highly price-sensitive.
I would probably take fewer short holiday trips during the year - switch to 1-2 long holidays instead of 6-7 weekend trips. That way the cost of flying takes up a lower percentage of the overall holiday budget.
If people get used to higher prices, I also expect airlines to try and maintain them even after the seating restrictions are lifted, same as adding carry-on bag fees but not lowering the base price to compensate.
I would pay to fly in a completely enclosed pod. I would enter it in my hazmat suit, seal the door, flood it with disinfectant, wait 5 min, remove hazmat suit then enjoy the flight. Put a fresh suit on before exiting.
I bet a lot of other people would too, now that it's becoming acceptable walking around in masks, goggles and hazmat suits.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadI expect that many of us will carry similar behavioral scars for years or decades later - ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports. I don't know what all those behaviors will be, but there's no way we avoid carrying at least a few with us.
And now for the twist: as chance would have it, I am working in Malta (a small independent island off the bottom of Sicily, the EU’s smallest member state), so I’m actually abroad in this crucial time and experiencing a very ‘light’ experience: 440 or so cases on a population of half a million, three or four confirmed deaths. We’ve been in a “light lockdown” since sometime in late march. People basically started working from home of their own initiative and/or businesses decided to implement this ahead of governmental recommendations to that effect; bars, restaurants, and non-essential shops are shut and those that are considered essential admit only a few people at the time. People largely give each other a wider berth and aren’t seen congregating in more than the governmentally mandated three people per cluster, but it’s all rather lax, and seems to have worked (fortunately).
So I can’t help but speculate about how odd everything will seem when I will finally go back to visit Milan: everybody back there has gone through a perspective-altering collective trauma that I haven’t experienced. I can imagine myself ending up doing something that has suddenly become a faux pas (or at the very least outmoded) such as putting forward my hand to give a shake, or something gauche such as (comparatively) ‘looming’ over somebody in a queue. I’m quite disturbed by this prospect, to be very honest. There might also be a bit of “survivor guilt” rolled in too (by a quirk of chance, I avoided the ordeal everybody else had to go through).
We’re not five months into the Twenties yet and things are definitely very different from what I had anticipated.
That kind of underscores my point, though, doesn’t it: I’ve had a very atypical experience compared to those of my compatriots (on both sides, Britain being an island but having massively bungled its management in the early stages). I’ve been working from home for six weeks and endure the annoyance of joining a short and diffuse queue to get into the local convenience store, and am at liberty to take a daily stroll in excess of a dozen kilometres; they’ve had their whole existence disrupted (they’ve lost jobs) and loved ones (I recently graduated from “know people who’ve lost their job because of this” to “know people who’ve lost a relative because of this”). It’s truly horrifying, and I’ve experienced it only vicariously, from afar.
It’s better if you abide by official sources though: https://www.maltairport.com/notifications/travel-advice-coro...
Secondly, increased hygiene has it's own set of problems. You dont kill just corona, you also kill the countless harmless pathogens, but who are important to keep your immune system on its toes. Its suspected that the reason there are so many allergic persons in the West lately it's the increasingly sanitized world around us.
Now, anytime I do anything, I wash my hands. Feels weird not to. Don't know if that is ever going away since I'm doing it instinctually already now
Wow it only took 3 months of brainwashing to permanently change your subconcious behaviour and make you paranoid of other people and the outside world? I sure hope most of humanity is at least slightly stronger willed then that and doesn't now live like a scared rabbit.
Second, yes, three months of heavily restricted movement, limited access to resources (from flour to dental care), to knowing people who are sick, dying, or at high risk has absolutely changed my perspective.
Knowing that we've got several more months of this ahead, this is a significant portion of our lives. One way to think about it is that most of us will have spent whole integer percentage of our lives in this situation. Of course that's going to impact the way we observe and interact with the world.
If that’s not what they were already doing, I wonder what that will look like.
Anyway, it’s not necessarily bad. Air travel was way too cheap considering its externalities.
I know someone who _commutes_ by plane because their office is two countries over (in Europe), they don’t want to move to the much higher COL country where the job is, and the office won’t let them be remote with the same salary. So every week twice a week, they fly. And it’s still cheaper than living next to the office. This insanity and many like it must stop, it’s so much pollution for completely stupid reasons.
Where do they stay when they go in to the office?
Governments want people to travel because tourism and hospitality employs thousands of people and brings substantial money into the economy for almost every country in the world.
I'm sceptical the airline industry, which has thrived with low fares, particularly in Europe, will raise prices. I expect they will do everything to tempt passengers to return to the air with low fares. Will that be enough to tempt us back on board?
All we really know is that the current corona tests don't seem to be very accurate.
This article references the WHO statement [1].
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/warns-coronavirus-imm...
We routinely drive 2000 miles round trip to visit family. People can tolerate lots of time in the car if they really want to go somewhere.
The only downside is that someone has to drive the car for all those hours. As soon as that problem is fixed, I don't see myself traveling by air at all unless I have to cross an ocean.
As an American, I would routinely drive 3+ hours to visit family in the same state, or 6+ hours across several states from my childhood home to university. Growing up in the Midwest, I got used to measuring distance in hours of highway travel time. I wouldn't make those trips every week or every month, but 5-6 times in a year would not have been unusual. I know many people who drove cross-country when moving from East to West Coast (a multi-day road trip), or vice-versa. Road trips in general are firmly rooted in the American experience, as captured in films such as 'National Lampoon's Vacation' or 'Little Miss Sunshine.'
Perhaps post-pandemic Europe will see its own road trip renaissance, complete with motels, minivans, and roadside attractions?
Road trips in Europe don't quite capture people's imagination in the same way as the Great American road trip. I think it might have something to do with driving across borders - it's exciting but also possibly stressful having to drive in a different, unfamiliar country.
Camping is already popular in some European countries. There are lots of camps with modern facilities so its popularity may grow even more.
And they would probably still have some wiggle room. Because 50% less customers would mean at least some reduction in costs.
What about the HN gang? Would you keep flying if prices doubled?
Will that help with the virus? It is less than six feet and you will be with that person for hours or so.
Pair that with everyone wearing a mask. I have read that the infection rate goes down by 95% between two people wearing a mask in comparison to two peole wearing no mask.
Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board.
I think instead of trying to wait it out and print money, we should start to engineer ourselfes out of this crisis.
[1] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-third-solution.h...
Isn't that the only thing you'd need? Then the seating arrangement wouldn't be relevant. Seems unnecessary to require both.
I would think there is not more wind in an airplane then in a supermarket. So the droplets that carry the virus should fall down to the ground in a similar fashion.
I'd pay a bit more for transcontinental flying but, like, I'm very much in the minority and I fly enough to get free upgrades most of the time anyways.
[1] https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-social-distancing...
This is too facile a take, given the existence of Business and Premium Economy.
I think the Asian low-cost carriers probably have it right with very very cheap basic seats, and then the ability to eke out the consumer surplus with reasonably priced “upgrades”. Air Asia’s “hot seats” have a tiny bit more leg room and are charged accordingly. I paid VietJet $6 for premium check-in, and it felt like the future.
Anyway, I suspect the very blunt approach of flight aggregators showing you cheapest first without clearly surfacing comfort factors cause what you describe, rather than an inherent unwillingness to pay among consumers.
Flight aggregators actually switched to providing more of this comfort information (especially Google Flights) specifically because of BE but it wasn't enough to save BE.
Business is paid for by businesses, and premium economy is paid for by, uh, cheap businesses. I think PE was brought in so in times of austerity businesses could avoid negative press associated with buying business-class airfare but still wanted to provide their employees a modicum of comfort so they could hit the ground running off the back of their flights.
LCCs are interesting, because I would argue they support my case: people won't pay more than the bare minimum fare for a flight. They may pay small amounts for comfort upgrades but the butt in seat is a commodity. Hence, legacy carriers who try and cover their costs of 50% less density in coach are going to get their lunch eaten by LCCs who don't as the pricing disparity grows larger.
I think this is probably wrong, but admit I don’t have the numbers to back it up. Last few years I’ve flown ~100 sectors in J and ~20 in PE, mostly intercontinental, and my impression is that there’s a strong showing of leisure travellers, based on the large number of couples and families. Could be expats with decent packages tho.
I think they bolster equally well the hypothesis that people will pay more, but they are guided to the cheapest option by Google Flights and so on, and then don’t price compare add-ons. Hard to know without hard data.
I would probably take fewer short holiday trips during the year - switch to 1-2 long holidays instead of 6-7 weekend trips. That way the cost of flying takes up a lower percentage of the overall holiday budget.
If people get used to higher prices, I also expect airlines to try and maintain them even after the seating restrictions are lifted, same as adding carry-on bag fees but not lowering the base price to compensate.
Also, it would not give you the additional leg room that we would get if every second seat was removed:
And it would not save as much weight as removing the seats.I bet a lot of other people would too, now that it's becoming acceptable walking around in masks, goggles and hazmat suits.