What Do You Want From Your Airline When Coronavirus Lockdowns End: Fair Or Fare?

Social distancing is currently common as a way to “flatten the curve” and it seems to be working. We no longer go out to restaurants unless it’s to pick up curbside, sports are canceled and the like. But flights are still flying, although many fewer and with a lot less demand. Since travel demand is low, being able to acceptably distance is possible on most flights today. But what happens when demand returns for going out to eat, flying, sports, and the like? What will the “new normal” for social distancing be on an airplane?

For an airline, this is an especially important and difficult problem because the airplane is a fixed size. Unlike a restaurant, you can’t “turn tables” more quickly to make up for fewer overall tables. Unlike a theme park, you can’t seat every other car on the roller coaster and still accommodate all the demand just for a cost of slightly longer wait times. What if people are not willing to sit three abreast anymore because of longer-term social distancing benefits?

This is where fair and fare come in. It is fair for customers to ask for some separation as a way to reduce future spread of diseases. That fairness will affect their airfare in a big way. and is that a fair tradeoff? Let’s take middle seats as an example. If we removed all middle seats from the ubiquitous A320 or 737 aircraft, or just stopped selling them, it would create more distance between each set of passengers. It also would reduce the amount of seats sold on the plane by about a third. The fuel cost won’t drop, nor will the labor cost, nor the aircraft costs, nor the airport cost. That means that everyone now sitting further away from each other has to pay about 30% more or the flight won’t operate economically. Is that fare too much to pay to be fair on long-term distancing?

Over the last few years, airlines have increased efficiency, and lowered overall airfares, by gradually using larger planes versus smaller ones, and putting more seats in each plane. Seat manufacturers have innovated by creating new seats that can be placed closer together yet keep the overall space and comfort of earlier seats placed further apart. Should we lose this efficiency and go back to a world of higher fares and fewer overall service options? Do we accept the employment hit and economic hit from a less effective national transportation network? We can’t talk about fair without considering fare!