The news from the other end of the world should be carefully registered at the Airbus headquarters in Hamburg. Japanese vacationers could soon fly to Hawaii again. The Tokyo government is considering setting up a travel bubble with the US state and restarting flights to Honolulu – allowing an exception to travel restrictions.
What does that have to do with Hamburg? There, a brand new Airbus A380 is waiting for collection, one of the last of its kind. The production of the giant aircraft is running out, as is that of the jumbo jet 747. The Japanese airline ANA has ordered the A380, and only for the route to Honolulu, see above there was strong demand. The flight corridor across the Pacific could not only do so Hoteliers in Hawaii, but also the German aviation industry.
Such so-called travel bubbles are intended to boost traffic between certain countries, each of which has the corona crisis under control, according to the original idea. In Europe, the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia formed such a bubble even before the European Union lifted travel restrictions. Travelers can move freely within the bubble. If you come from outside, you have to be in quarantine, if you are allowed in at all.
Many tourism countries are working on such agreements to attract tourists again. New Zealand wanted a deal with Australia. The island nation is largely free of corona and is economically dependent on visitors from down under. Negotiations continued for weeks, but then the number of infections rose again in Australia. Even if there is still no result, other regions of the world have taken the model as a model.
China with Taiwan, Israel with Cyprus
China could form a bubble with Taiwan and South Korea, considerations. Israel is said to be in talks with Greece and Cyprus. The Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore could form a travel bubble with their neighboring countries. Or just with some regions. The Indonesian holiday island of Bali has been spared by the corona virus and would like to be “open for business” again, while the capital Jakarta looks different.
Just as German vacationers were initially only allowed to go to Mallorca, there could be direct flights to Bali from Singapore. However, many questions have to be clarified and standards agreed, for example in the test question and recording of travelers using the respective Corona app. “The recovery of our business depends on traveling from A to B with some disabilities, especially in the intercontinental area,” said Peter Gerber, President of the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry (BDL).
A second wave is the end of the bubble mind game
“There must be no patchwork of different regulations here. We need stable framework conditions that travelers can rely on. ”One problem is the classification of different regions according to their risk – high, medium or low – and above all that this can change again quickly. Sydney, for example, has recently become a corona hotspot, and Israel is already experiencing a second wave. This often eliminates bubble mind games again.
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How quickly the situation can change can be seen in the European Union. While the Federal Foreign Office’s worldwide travel warning currently applies until August 31, it was lifted for EU countries and other European countries in mid-June. Now the infection numbers are increasing again in some regions. France and Germany again advise against traveling to certain regions of Spain, including Catalonia with the tourist metropolis Barcelona.
Aragon and Navarre should also avoid visitors. Britain and Norway are now sending Spain returnees into a two-week quarantine. Airlines therefore cancel flights. Is the bubble already bursting? Due to concerns about imported corona infections, Germany is now building corona test centers at the airports. The Covid-19 tests at the airports could make the travel bubble last.
“Even if the situation in a travel destination suddenly changes from safe to unsafe, a test on return can ensure that people can continue to live their lives as normal and do not have to be in quarantine,” said BDL President Gerber. “We have to make travel even easier again, with instruments that allow us to react flexibly to the infection process.”
So far, air traffic has been recovering more slowly than the airlines had hoped. Last-minute lust was limited, at least in June, as new figures from the IATA world association show. “Surprisingly weak” is the comeback, said chief economist Brian Pearce on Tuesday in Geneva. Passenger numbers were almost 87 percent below the previous year’s figure. In most regions, the machines are as empty as never before. “If there is no increase, the flight plans will be cut back,” Pearce predicted. While it was previously expected that air traffic would return to the pre-epidemic level in 2023, it is now said that it will probably be 2024.
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