“They have seen that at KLM,” says De Jong. “So now they combine flights to get those planes full.”
And there is another difference between British Airways and Lufthansa on the one hand and KLM on the other. “Air France-KLM has the most flights to China in this part of Europe,” says De Jong. “So those other companies simply don’t have that much to combine.”
Air France-KLM gets more than 1.4 billion euros of its annual revenue from its flights to China, which is 6 percent of the total. “You don’t just delete it.”
Travel advice
What is also important when considering airline companies is which travel advice applies in their own country. Certainly in the case of British Airways, that plays a role, says aviation expert Melkert. Today, England refined the travel advice.
The whole of China now applies: travel only when necessary. “It will be very difficult for British Airways to insist that you just keep flying to China,” says Melkert.
KLM says it follows the guidelines of the Dutch government. Here, strict travel advice only applies in the province of Hubei, in the rest of China only advice to watch out for possible risks applies.
All in a plane fuselage
According to Joris Melkert, another consideration for airline companies is the liability issue. “If you know that there are people on board who may be infected with the virus, and you put them all in an airplane fuselage, you could just be held liable,” he says.
Whether that would stand before a judge remains to be seen, “but as an airline it is not good for your name”.
The economic impact of the decisions of these airlines depends on how long this situation lasts. “We have experienced this twice before, with the SARS and the MERS crisis,” says Melkert. You could see that in the flight statistics, he says. “In those years there was a dip in the number of flights.”
“This situation does not have to cost companies a lot of money, there are hundreds of flights a day. But if it lasts a long time, you can see it in the turnover.”
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