Member Info for big-blue

The testing as a solution was never going to work for the reason of incubation time. No matter how accurate, at any point carriers will always be passing through. The 'test lobby' are rather like 'the mask lobby'. Campaign groups that rapidly latched on to a cause and promoted it as if it was the big solution in order to get kudos. Same with this nuts idea of ignoring the dose schedule, promoted by a basic campaign group. You don't need to reach herd immunity before allowing vetted people in, vetted as in vaccinated. As with a wide variety of contagious conditions, allowing movement of people is a risk. That will never go away. A new name is added to the list COVID 19. There will now always be COVID 19 in the population. The key is to keep the levels such that they can be managed by the health systems. So the annual flu vaccine will include COVID variations. Perhaps more than one a year. For international travel, you will probably need the current vaccine as a routine along with all the jabs needed, whether for self-protection or protection of the community you are travelling too. As a mechanisim to enable travel, I think it is inevitable that it will become a requirement. Testing is accompanied by quarantine, why bother with the test then?

I disagree with the dismissal over a 'covid passport'. All territories are very eager to get people throught the door. A world wide standard may not be required, the evidence of having a vaccine as registered with WHO should suffice. My yellow fever vaccine for entry to China was just a peice of paper, from my local surgery, not a specific world standard form. I wouldn't go as far as saying you will have to have your passport stamped with a covid visa, or the biometric chip updated. Countries that try to go down that route will significantly restrict travellers - but politically it might have to be the route. The critical thing is, if you have been [correctly] vaccinated, the probability of you spreading is very very low and therefore you are an acceptable risk verses recovering the local economy. Otherwise what other measure are you going to have before allowing travellers country by country access, a specific R rate maintained for 3 months or something? Waving a peice of paper in the wind at the bottom steps outside the plane declaring "I have a peice of paper in my hand" might get a second historic hearing.

I think the big issue will be people being able to buy a vaccination for travel and that turning into a very hot political potato.

Vaccination only useful in getting 'herd immunity', i.e. the R value down to .4, .3 so that the consequences of contracting are managable, just like with other virus like flue, sars, and so on. What will, must, con only happen, and not currently in open discussion, is the vaccination passport. If you have been vaccinated, you will therefore be a low risk spreader as the virus will not take hold in any significant way and you will not be a spreader. That is why it is essential that the vaccination program follows the manufacturers guidance rather than Blair's idiot single dose stratergy that he has been pushing away at behind the scenes. Glad to see so many doctors resisting. Hope the single dose policy is dumped very quickly so the current vaccinations are valid and can be used on a passoprt. As soon as the passport idea gets the thumbs up, coupled with people making specualtive bookings on the basis they can change then the recovery on airline sp will be very fast and very big. In fact the whole holiday sector will go balistic just on the discussion of vaccination passports.

BA terms for changes a bit weaker than others. They need to pull the 3rd March date foward to now. We want booking now not from 3rd March when protection starts Come on BA, put your thinking caps on.
Changing your booking
You can change the dates and destination of your booking without incurring a change fee, although you will need to pay any difference in price (applies to bookings made from 3 March 2020 onwards for journeys that are due to have been completed by 31 August 2021). Change booking Terms and Conditions
Cancelling your booking
If you decide you no longer want to travel, you can cancel your booking and we’ll give you a voucher to the same value for a future booking (applies to bookings made from 3 March 2020 onwards for journeys that are due to have been completed by 31 August 2021). Cancellation Terms and Conditions

See flights and holidays T&Cs

Ryanair hedging, this is what IAG is going to have to reat to in what will become a cut throat market. Long or even medium term marketing stratergies perhaps not the best way over the next 6-8 weeks. I would like to see daily stratergy revision and constantly pipping the competition.
"We know your plans may change so we've dropped our flight change fees for all new bookings made for travel before 31 January 2021. This means you can change your flight time, date or even destination, giving you complete flexibility and peace of mind. Move your flight for free to any date before 30 September 2021, just pay the fare difference.
No change fee was applicable for bookings made after 10 June for travel in July, August, September, October, November and now December and January as well.Please note fare difference will still be applied.
*Any flight changes that are made to bookings that were booked as part of the 1m €5 flights sale promotion (Sept 1 and Sept 2 2020) will be charged a Flight Change fee. "

ohhhhhhh bring back the £5 fares. Cheaper to fly over to Rome for a pizza than go into London. Surroundings are also much nicer. We did some crazy journies - still were doing before covid. skyscanner.net is the secret, set prices live for skyscanner and your planes will be full.

Business travel will always happen, the move to virtual had already peaked imo. There are limits on the security and practicality of online conferences. The demise of face to face has been peddled by many in the tech sector as they try to flog whatever gadget they have at the time. Face to face is still a fundemental of dealing with people and will never go away. Also, you can't get laid on a conference call like you can at the conference hotel, so I think given human nature what it is it is safe to say as long as the business community is horny, there will be a lot of business travel for a very, very, very long time :)

Point I made about fuel is you can have some degree of control. Ryanair set a fixed price for 12 months and during the contract the price crashed so they continued payinf way over the odds. So the first choice is to buy at market prices or do a fixed term contract at set price (or constrained formula). So IAG could do a deal now to buy x million tons over 12 months cheaply not knowing if they can return to near full capacity over the time period, or buy at market prices as flights return only to find a supply issue and significant price rises. Of course, a fuel surcharge could be brought back but travellers are very savey these days, it is a flying bus a to b, so adding a hundred or two extra results in sales drops. BUT, if you agree to buy in advance, if the planes can't fly you end up paying a cash penalty for defualting. How much of the current cash burn is for fuel that isn't being used?? If, when, IAG makes announcements on any fuel deals or policies, it will be very interesting to see how the market responds. It might be a 50/50 split between contract v market so the sp doesn't move. The rise or fall of IAG over the year might be heavily affected by the type of fuel deal as the opeing up (or otherwise) of travel routes unfolds. I would go for contract deal with a plan to convert planes to temporary cargo if passanger routes don't return because there is currently a serious issue with lack of air cargo space. In fact, BA should be taking the seats out now and getting cargo in the sky.

Group or not, the critical cost for airlines is fuel. Ryan air got stung a few years ago when it locked itself in to a fixed price and then the market price crashed. IAG and BA bulk purchase was on fuel and they got the price formula correct. Standing alone, there is no reason BA would prosper or fail along with the other parts left in the group. It will all come down to getting the fuel deal right.

Vaccination passports will be used to open up international travel. The spot tests have issues with false negatives and are unreliable, it is why in part the test and trace and mass testing programms just don't work out in reality. As the vaccines are proven more and more to be affective, and against new strains, it maybe that vaccination passports for a whole range of illnesses will be the norm. Yellow fever for example is one you have to show entering places like China. Airport covid testing will not kick start the travel economy when it is some £150 per head. After the most vunerable people have been vaccinated, expect paid for vaccination to start to become available (with a lot of chest beating objections) aimed at people who want to travel. This might start to emerge sooner rather than latter. BUT, I expect that multi-dose vaccination will have to have been carried out according to manufature instructions before biometric passport details can be updated. Within a few years, I predict you will need a range of annual vaccinations including flu before being able to travel and paying for them will be just another travel expense like insurance and baggage. When public debate about vaccination passports begins proper, then I expect the sp to jump. My target to look at profit taking is 180 IAG, 900 EZY

As for earlier posts re Norwegian, I believe the main shareholder is the sovereign fund of Norway and I doubt very much they will let it go. I remember reading about their purchase of some 230 ish new Dreamliners and that there was a good deal of head scratching trying to understand how they could stay afloat. Sovereign fund investment is normal a structural and long term investment and it looked to me this was Norway hooking into a long term presence in the travel market. Partnerships might be in the offering though. Have flown Norwegian a few times and regard it as the Ryan air of long haul.

The point about short haul is you get 2-4 flights per day out of one aircraft which is 2-4 new sets of passangers with paid for luggage and onboard purchases. That is why short haul can be much more profitable than long haul. For long haul it is down to how many premium seats you can sell, which is why there is so much emphasis on what you get in business, first, premium and so on. As for market recovery, it will all come down to destination rules about isolation, how long and under what arrangements. A resort complex like Golden Sands in Varna Bulgaria can be closed off as a massive bubble allowing low level threat holiday makers to visit and control movement in and out. The same can also be arranged for large hotels. I would expect arrangements like that to begin for some countires. The most important will be vaccination passports allowing people to come from high infection zones to the 'mega resort bubbles', demarcation to reduce social mixing and so on. That will suit the TUI's more but as it will be seen as the start of the opening up, the vaccination passport will be more and more accepted and free travel will follow following protocols. This is where the UK may shoot itself in the foot. The vaccine is two doses 3 weeks apart and must be adhered to else destinations may say people have not been properly vaccinated and vaccination passports invaid. It will be the final irony, we developed the common vaccine but miss-apply and remian locked in the UK for another 12 months!