Delta CEO Says Travel Industry Will Come Out Of Slump In 2021

The leader of Delta Airlines said that he expects some recovery from the slowdown caused by coronavirus in the latter half of 2021.

In a memo issued to employees of Delta Airlines, CEO Ed Bastian said that he expects 2021 to begin in the same lines as that of the previous year.

However, the availability of vaccines is likely to become the turning point for the travel industry, and he expects that his company should be able to generate positive cash flow by spring 2021.

Delta CEO Says Travel Industry Will Come Out Of Slump In 2021

Even though there is uncertainty about travel demand in the near future, things are likely to take a positive turn when a significant number of people are vaccinated in the next few months. He added that the industry never had to execute a plan for recovery in earlier days as they had never seen a pandemic of this scale.

He said that the success of the organization would depend on improving the collaboration and being open to new ideas in the near future. Apart from that, he also said that the industry has to adapt to changing requirements in the future and provide the best option for travelers.

Air travel had declined close to 96% in mid-April of 2020. It has recovered by a huge margin from that level, even though it is currently half of what it was in 2019. As the vaccination program is running at a slower pace, many people in the industry expect that it may take a few more months for travel demand to come to normal.

According to the latest data, close to 5 million people have received the vaccines so far, and the speed is likely to pick up in the next few weeks. Health experts are of the opinion that the federal authorities need to target more than 1 million vaccinations per day in order to reach the level of herd immunity in the next few months.

Biden had promised earlier that his administration would keep a target to distribute a hundred million doses of vaccines in the first hundred days of his administration.

However, considering the rising number of coronavirus cases across the country, health experts feel that the numbers should be better than 1 million vaccinations per day in order to control the pandemic.

The travel industry also wants priority to be given to flight attendants in the next phase of the mass vaccination program.

They had requested the CDC in this regard as flight attendants deal with a large number of public on a daily basis, and they should be included in the essential worker category to receive the covid-19 vaccines in the second phase of vaccination.

The travel industry is also gearing up towards implementing several advanced features in the near future. Many people are of the opinion that contactless services will be the new norm in the airline industry.

Using advanced technology will help the airlines to provide services in a contactless way as much as possible to the passengers. This is beneficial for both the passengers as well as the airline workers.

This will save time for both the passengers and the airport authorities as most of the transactions can be done online in an efficient manner.

Apart from that, this will also reduce the contact time between the Travellers and flight attendants. In this manner, the risk of transmission reduces by a huge margin during the journey.

The airlines are also planning to use apps to monitor the health status of passengers. In this way, the passengers need not submit physical copies of their covid-19 test report.