This video was made possible by CuriosityStream. Watch the extended cut of this video, listen
to my podcast, or watch our upcoming original exclusively on Nebula, which you can get access
to for $15 a year through the bundle deal at CuriosityStream.com/Wendover. There was a time, earlier in 2020, when there
was no news but COVID news. There was this time when every word of every
story of every front-page of every paper either directly or indirectly dealt with the Coronavirus,
but, now, many months on, that is no longer the case. The world has awoken in a way that there is
more of relevance. However, in certain circles, in those most
dramatically impacted, COVID is still everything. That is certainly the case in aviation. Almost nothing they do nowadays is not dictated
by the ever-present backdrop of the century’s first pandemic. Most of what anyone has been talking about
recently, including us, has been on how this will fundamentally change the industry—on
how the airline of 2029 will look markedly different than that of 2019. Today, though, in October, 2020, we’re nearing
the one-year mark since when SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have made the jump from animal
to human. With this amount of time behind us, the airline
industry has already changed. The airline of October, 2020 is already different
than the airline of October, 2019. So, to see what’s happened already, we’re
going to look at eight flights that, for reasons either big or small, would have been considered
strange, unique, or even unimaginable just a year ago today, but now, are nothing out
of the ordinary. We’ll start with the end for one aircraft—at
least for a while. On September 25th, Qantas’ VH-OQI, an a380,
flew from Dresden, Germany to Victorville, California—a route that is quite clearly
unordinary for an airline based in Australia, but its not the route that made this notable. VH-OQI had been flown to Dresden in March
for cabin refurbishment. By September, though, it became clear that
not only was the refurbishment unnecessary, but that the aircraft was too. airborne until, at least, 2023. This demonstrates that this is the soonest
Qantas believes passenger demand could return to 2019 levels—when the a380 served as its
flagship aircraft. However, the fact, specifically, that the
airline would bother storing the aircraft, rather than scrapping or selling it, also
marks a hint of optimism. Long-term aircraft storage is not cheap—it
involves quite regular maintenance and monitoring—and so this means that Qantas does truly believe
that demand will return to the levels of before—an opinion not held by all. Qantas desperately needs every dollar they
can get right now, so they would only spend money on keeping their a380s if they truly
believed that there was a significant need for super-large aircraft in the medium-term
future. Therefore, while its plenty easy to find negative
signs for the future of aviation, this flight does represent a belief that the good times
will return for airlines. This next flight, meanwhile, didn’t, and,
in some ways, couldn’t exist a year ago. On October 8th, Southwest flight 1920 flew
from Phoenix, Arizona to San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. This certainly looks like a fairly normal
flight—just another big city to resort town route—but the backstory behind it explains
its peculiarity. Mexico is one of the few major countries that
has not restricted entry to Americans, so, when the US emerged from lockdown in May and
June, Cabo was one of the first international destinations added back to Southwest’s network. This is, without a doubt, due to the fact
that it’s both open to Americans and, crucially, a leisure destination. Airline demand is traditionally split into
leisure and business, and these two segments have had very different stories of recovery. Leisure demand picked up quickly and sharply
as soon as stay-at-home orders lifted, while business demand has barely increased at all. This is no surprise considering that, overwhelmingly,
offices are still closed, conferences are still cancelled, and clients are still cautious. Therefore, airlines have had to respond by
removing capacity from where people travel for work, and adding it to where people travel
for vacation, such as Cabo. Right now, there’s a huge amount of capacity
being dumped into the Florida and Mexico markets. For example, in the coming winter, there are
twenty-four flights a week scheduled between New York and Cabo, versus just two a week
last winter. Some leisure destinations have not only recovered
faster, but have come out ahead versus how they were before. This is certainly the case with Cabo, and
the October 8th flight from Phoenix represented the first of many, with Southwest adding this
city-pair to their network. Overall, leisure is winning, business is losing,
and therefore airlines that have historically been more leisure oriented, like Southwest,
have fared far better than their more business-oriented competitors. One of those more business-oriented competitors
is United, which announced this new route from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Fort Myers, Florida. Much like Southwest's flight, this probably
doesn’t seem that strange but, for United, it’s a dramatic deviation from the mean. You see, like most legacy carriers, United
has traditionally been a strict follower of the hub-and-spoke school of network planning. Every single flight they fly, with very limited
exception, either originates or terminates in DC, Newark, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, or Guam—their hub airports. This flight, though, along with a whole package
of others announced at the same time, does not. United wouldn’t break from precedent without
a good reason, and so this must mean something. Most likely, it indicates a mix of desperation
and innovation—desperation because they’re now seriously competing on leisure-routes,
something they avoided before; and innovation because United is reinventing its network
design and getting a little more creative. Creativity and innovation is what pushes an
industry forward and so, even if it comes in the form of a route that is just ever so
slightly different, it demonstrates a characteristic that would be welcome once the downturn is
over. Airlines are now willing to find revenue wherever
it might be, whereas in the past they might have only chosen to pursue the most profitable
form of revenue, so this flight, UA2861, from Guam to Singapore on a 787, is another that
could never have existed a year ago. Now, Guam is a United hub, but it’s never
had flights to Singapore, definitively never had these on a 787, and absolutely never operated
them without passengers and yet now, four times a week, they are. With the current lack in long-haul flights,
which traditionally carry freight in their belly-holds, global cargo capacity is down,
meaning prices are up, meaning airlines can reliably turn a slight profit flying passenger
airplanes without passengers. In a matter of months, United has turned its
Guam hub essentially into a mini cargo hub, with regular flights stopping over from the
US, going on to Asian destinations. Beyond this, globally, United now operates
hundreds of cargo-only flights per week, even though one year ago, it didn’t operate a
single one. Whether it’ll turn Guam into a major passenger
hub for the US to Asia market is an unanswerable question right now, but at the very least,
this further demonstrates how airlines will truly take any revenue they can get, even
if it involves turning into a cargo airline in a matter of months. Revenue is, of course, half of the equation
for profitability, but the other part is, of course, costs. Therefore, for weathering this crisis, airlines
need to get as much revenue as possible, while also minimizing cost. This American Airlines flight from Eagle County
Airport to Aspen was not about bringing in revenue, but rather about reducing costs. You see, only 29 miles or 46 kilometers separate
these two airports, meaning nobody’s really looking to fly between them. However, this flight was part of an overall
flight that went from Dallas, to Eagle County, to Aspen, to Montrose, and back to Dallas,
meaning a passenger going to Montrose would have to sit through at least two stops. Now, a passenger is much more likely to take
a one-stop itinerary than a two, so in a time when American Airlines is fighting for every
customer it can get, why would it fly such a clearly uncompetitive itinerary? Well, the reason is that American didn’t
really care how many people took this flight because it was always going to be very close
to none. They couldn’t, however, just cancel it because
airlines in the US received a package of financial aid from the government in exchange for, among
other things, agreeing to continue serving every airport they did previously. American had previously served these three
airports which primary act as entry points for tourist towns—each of which implemented
restrictions preventing visitors during their stay-at-home periods. This meant demand for travelling to these
places was essentially zero—in the case of Aspen in May, for example, just 7% of American’s
seats were filled. Therefore, instead of operating three different
empty flights, they rather operated just one that stopped at each of the three airports,
thereby creating that 29-mile flight which was, at the time, the shortest commercial
flight in America. Until the CARES act’s expired on October
1st, American and other airlines found ways to both stay loyal to their new masters in
the government, while also minimizing cost to the lowest level. But back on the revenue side, on September
25th, Qantas operated QF1570 from Canberra to Gold Coast Airport in Australia. Exactly one week earlier, on September 18th,
Queensland, the state that the Gold Coast is in, announced it was opening its borders
to the Australian Capital Territory, the territory that Canberra is in. That very same day, Qantas announced that
it would start a new route between these two airports one week later. Now, normally, when airlines announce new
routes, they do so months or even years in advance. For example, when Qantas announced a new route
from Brisbane to Chicago, originally slated to start in April, 2020 but now pushed back,
they did so in July, 2019—a full eight months in advance. To shorten this to one week is unprecedented,
but with borders opening and closing at a moment’s notice, predicting demand has become
incredibly tough. So, in this case, Qantas saw that demand for
travel to Queensland was going to surge, and they were able to respond lightning-fast—allowing
for them to capture it. Other airlines around the world have done
the same, and the industry, in general, has become more agile and data-driven. These will be useful skills for airlines to
maintain long into the future as, when there is demand, a company’s excuse should never
be that they couldn’t act fast enough to capture it. Sometimes, though, it’s strategic to ignore
demand. On October 6th, American Airlines flew its
last flight from Greenville, North Carolina, for at least a month, but likely longer. An airline pulling service from a small, regional
airport in a time of economic crisis is nothing unexpected, but this case stands out. The cut was originally announced as only for
a month, from October 7th to November 4th—a date recognizable for its proximity to the
November 3rd US election. There’s no reason for an airline to believe
that the economic conditions that make a route unprofitable on October 7th would be resolved
by November 4th—if anything, they should get worse as winter nears—so suspending
a route for only one month to save money doesn’t make sense. In addition, this service suspension was announced
along with fourteen others impacting fourteen small airports in fourteen different states—including
Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, and other swing states in the 2020 election. Also, many of the states that American Airlines
cut service to have incumbent senators who polling data indicate might lose on November
3rd. This includes Thom Tillis who, as happens
when small airports lose their only commercial service, immediately faced pressure from his
constituents to bring flights back to Greenville. American Airlines is essentially playing chicken
with the US government. With CARES act funding having now expired,
airlines desperately want more financial aid from Congress, and with fifteen routes to
fifteen states cut, there are now 30 senators that have to answer for why they haven’t
passed an airline relief bill to help save these small towns’ service. In the end, three of these suspensions didn’t
go through, but most others were extended another month—thereby ratcheting up the
pressure on Congress by signaling that these temporary suspensions might not be so temporary
if they don’t get the relief they say they need. While in the US and elsewhere, airlines’
continued survival is increasingly linked to politics, in other places, it’s always
been. China’s aviation recovery has played a key
part in the country’s narrative of overall recovery which is, at least compared to other
places, genuine. On August 28th, Chengdu Airlines flight 2712
was the first to leave from the airport that, eight months earlier, undoubtably played a
central role in spreading the virus across the globe—Wuhan Tianhe International. This flight, though, was the first of hundreds
to leave Wuhan that day and that day, in fact, was the first when the number of flights in
the country reached 100% relative to January 1st of the same year. China’s aviation recovery was fast, in part
because China’s virus recovery was fast. The country’s airlines are not completely
back to normal yet—their load factors and fares are lower than before and their international
market is still nearly nonexistent—but China’s airlines, along with those of New Zealand,
Australia, and all the other countries that have successfully curbed the virus, demonstrate
that the economic crisis cannot end until the public health crisis does and therefore,
no matter which one cares about more, the route to recovery always starts with health. The YouTube algorithm, as any creator knows,
is optimized for one thing—keeping the average person on the platform for the longest time—but
for us in the educational niche, our audience likes different things than the average YouTube
viewer. We know what our audience wants, but sometimes
that doesn’t line up with the stuff that the YouTube algorithm will favor. For example, I wanted to make this video longer,
but I had to keep it within the key ten to fifteen minute length so that performance
didn’t tank. Instead, I’ve cut it down from covering
ten flights to just eight, and put an extended version with what I thought were the least
important of the ten on Nebula. This is just one of many pieces of exclusive
content you can get on there, including Showmakers—the podcast from Real Engineering and myself where
we interview other great creators such as Stephanie from Real Science or Evan from Polymatter—or
our next Nebula original, which we’re putting the final touches on currently and will release
in a few weeks. Of course, the best way to get access to Nebula
is through the CuriosityStream bundle deal, which also gives you access to all their thousands
of truly interesting documentaries and non-fiction shows which each entertain and educate. Together, CuriosityStream and Nebula represent
the best deal in streaming because, at $15 a year, it’s the same price as a month at
other single streaming services, so make sure to sign up before the current sale pricing
is over at CuriosityStream.com/Wendover.
Seems to be available even without nebula?
https://watchnebula.com/videos/wendover-productions-the-ten-flights-that-show-how-covid19-reinvented-aviation