“Although some airlines will inevitably go out of business, others will scale up to fill the void,” comments Simmons. “The ‘rightsizing’ of supply and demand may take time, however, leading to higher pricing in the medium term.”

No easy answers

The watchword for aviation, as for so many industries looking to rebound from Covid-19, is going to be uncertainty. New waves of infection, or treatment breakthroughs, would both influence the future path. So too will political and regulatory responses, as well as the wider global economic fallout that is being forecast.

Demand, crucially, is not rising evenly; different government restrictions – especially quarantine periods on arrival for travellers from some nations – will have effects that are very complex to model, and will necessarily differ between nations or even within regions of the same nation.

The US is an example of how perceptions and thus demand can vary across a nation. Scott DeAngelo, chief marketing officer of niche leisure carrier Allegiant Air, said on an earnings call that customer surveys revealed that “in the Midwest and Mid Atlantic, the Upper West, I got to tell you they don’t share the opinion that the evening news is putting out there” around travel. Pictures over the US Memorial Day holiday weekend have shown leisure destinations in some parts of the country packed with partygoers.

It seems likely that travel resumption “bubbles” between neighbouring countries and regions with acceptably low infection rates (where “acceptably” will also vary) will continue, and while these may stimulate demand travellers will also not want to be caught overseas if restrictions return swiftly. The question of whether any travel insurance would cover Covid-19-related issues is also crucial.

Airlines also need to start flying for people to start buying tickets even in a reduced demand scenario, and we are only just starting to see a very limited number of airlines resuming very limited schedules. That all makes predicting the effects of the interlocking factors upon which airline pricing is based challenging. The demand side of the curve is particularly tricky for long-haul pricing, says Air Astana CEO Peter Foster, who nevertheless expects that the stronger long-haul airlines are likely to try to kickstart demand with lower fares.

Short-haul carriers, meanwhile, may benefit from low oil prices, reduced aircraft prices that enable counter-cyclical orders and lower salaries due to surplus aviation workers. “The prognosis may well be lower airfares on short/medium haul routes for at least 18 months to two years,” Foster expects.

And while Covid-19 is unprecedented, he believes the past can offer indicators for future trends. “After every major crisis of the last 20 years – the Asian financial crisis of 1998, 9/11, the global financial crisis – low-cost airlines have emerged faster and stronger because suppressed demand combined with depressed consumer spending power has driven people to them,” he says. “I doubt 2020/21 will be any different.”

Aviation journalist John Walton writes about airlines, aircraft and everything aeronautical. He welcomes questions and discussions from readers via email to john@walton.travel and on Twitter (he’s @thatjohn).