Record Travel Demand & Sustainability in Aviation

CGTN Europe

Paul Charles, Chief Executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency spoke to CGTN Europe about the busiest Christmas season on record.

Transcript

00:00And talking of airlines, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic are set for their busiest Christmas season on record,

00:06driven by strong travel demand and lower ticket prices.

00:10In the UK, carriers plan to offer over 6 million seats during the Christmas week,

00:15surpassing the 2019 record, with popular destinations including Amsterdam, Dublin and Tenerife.

00:22Across the Atlantic, US airlines forecast a record 54 million passengers

00:27between December 19th and January 6th, with top destinations including Orlando, Las Vegas and Honolulu.

00:35Paul Charles is the chief executive of travel consultancy, the PC Agency.

00:41It's astonishing to see the numbers of people who are travelling.

00:44The numbers are up around 5 to 10% higher than the previous record of people travelling just before Covid started,

00:53so way back in 2019.

00:55And really there are two factors that are at play here.

00:59First of all, more of us want to travel to see family and friends.

01:03Since Covid, things have changed. We don't want to be kept at bay.

01:08We don't want to stay put around this time of year.

01:11We want to be going to visit family and friends much more than we used to.

01:15And the second factor is really that we're into experiences much more.

01:20We're prepared to use any disposable income that we have to, rather than buy clothes as we might have done much more in the past,

01:28to actually travel much more and see destinations that we've never seen before or that we want to go back to.

01:35Yeah, and which destinations then are seeing the highest demand?

01:38And why do you think those ones are so popular?

01:42Well, certainly out of the UK, then many people wish to travel to places like Amsterdam or Barcelona or southern Spain.

01:51They are eternally popular, and even more so this Christmas and New Year period.

01:57In terms of beyond Europe, then we're still looking at many popular locations like Bangkok, Singapore,

02:07certainly Sydney, which there isn't that much airlift to, but every flight is full if you can get on one,

02:13and then into the Americas as well, and as popular as ever as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles at this time of year.

02:21This is an industry that has seen challenges, primarily with the pandemic in recent years,

02:26but there are also economic concerns and climate change.

02:30So how is the industry buffering that trend then?

02:35There are many headwinds, as there are in quite a few sectors, but certainly in the aviation sector,

02:40you've got a combination, obviously, of a generation, a younger generation,

02:45which wants to see much more progress towards sustainable aviation and cleaner aircraft, as well as cleaner airports.

02:52And we're starting to see that with the likes of the 787 from Boeing, the A350 from Airbus,

02:58these newer generation aircraft, which are far less fuel hungry. They're far more fuel efficient.

03:06So sustainability is one of the things the industry is starting to tackle.

03:11Then, of course, the other main issue at the moment in the sector is really around availability of staff.

03:18The fact that airlines can't get enough engineers or maintenance workers all over the world, not just in Europe, but everywhere.

03:26They're finding it difficult to hire enough maintenance crew as their own air fleets get bigger.

03:32And that's what's really slowing down growth, ironically, even though we're seeing demand shooting ever higher.

03:39Yeah, interesting stuff. I mean, for the future then, what does the future hold?

03:43I mean, we've seen driverless cars, haven't we? What about pilots, for example? Will we see driverless planes?

03:50I don't think we're going to see driverless planes. But what we will see, and in fact are starting to see, are electric aircraft.

03:58And these are planes which are literally flying by battery power.

04:02There are trials taking place in Scandinavia of aircraft carrying around 30 to 60 people by electric plane.

04:10And I reckon within 10 to 20 years, certainly, we'll all be flying in some way, even if it's short haul only on electric planes.

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