Blocked Seats May Just Lead to Airfares That Only Corporate Travelers Can Afford
Photo Credit: Members of Delta's line maintenance crew disinfect the surfaces of the cabin including tray tables, seat backs and in-flight entertainment screens in a Boeing 757 in Atlanta. Rank Studios / Chris Rank
Skift Take
With safety still rising up the traveler agenda, airlines won't have an easy task setting prices as they balance passenger welfare with profitability.
Something has to give as airlines pledge to keep blocking out middle seats on their planes, and it will likely be businesses that take the hit from the resulting hike in ticket prices.
Despite a vast range of airline cleaning measures and protocols, including at airports, physical distancing looks set to become the norm across the travel industry for some time.
Airlines aren't happy, especially as they near the limits of how much cost they can actually take out of their operations, and as load factors go down, they'll be forced to increase airfares — and to such an extent only corporations would be able to afford them, according to one industry expert.
“If airlines really took the social distancing factor to be essential, and they had to figure out how to make a profitable airline run with really low load factors, obviously they’d raise the prices,” said Scott Gilespie, CEO at consultancy tClara at an online event organized by Nina & Pinta and the North Carolina c
