expect a quicker than expected return of high-contribu- tion passengers."
Anyone who travels in a plane full of passengers would not complain if they had known them: air transport has made prodigious progress, and this has a cost, we must not forget. And to go carbon neutral, we will still have to make colossal investments, which will pass on the increases in prices, which is logical. Class & Relax: The impact will be all the more impor- tant as passengers with a high contribution to travel business are becoming rarer... Marc Rochet: Travel business will return... but our pro- blem is immediate. Almost non-existent during the cri- sis, it has returned at best to -30% of its pre-pandemic level. However, it represents up to 50% of the revenues of legacy carriers. They have been put on a drip with subsidies and have been unable to review their cost bases: the next few years will be very difficult for them. It is normal to put a sick person on a drip to save his life, but that is not what will cure him! He must be for- ced to make efforts during his convalescence. The European Commission has decided otherwise and I regret it. Class & Relax: Does the press have a share of respon- sibility in these difficult times for air transport, having accused it of contributing to the rapid expansion of the pandemic, accusing it of also being a major polluter? We know that air transport pollutes less than digital (4% of the carbon footprint)... Jean-Louis Baroux: And the fashion industry pollutes up to 8%. I don't think that air transport knows how to defend itself. Marc Rochet: Air transport has made a lot of progress in terms of environmental protection and everything must be done to accelerate this movement. We need to modernise the fleets and then all the runway equip- ment at airports, which should be converted to electric power. Finally, we must listen to our customers and know how to question ourselves! See you next year in Malta, where the APG World Connect will take place, to see how airlines will have been able to renew themselves in the face of these new challenges! https://worldconnect.apg-ga.com
Let's see what Jean-Louis Baroux and Marc Rochet think.
Class & Relax: Marc Rochet, you were almost born in an aeroplane, your father worked in the airline indus- try. How would you sum up the past half-century in civil aviation? Marc Rochet: The first expression that comes to mind is that I followed the tremendous expansion of air tra- vel, which at the time was reserved for a certain 'elite', for people who had to travel. Then the traffic was ope- ned up to people who had never even considered taking a plane one day: this democratisation was at the
origin of an incredible mixture of cultures, development of travel, tourism; an opening up to the world that went beyond the horizon of their town, their region. Of course, there were localized crises over time whose impact was obvious, but nothing like the global crisis we are going through, made of stop-and- go: lockdown, opening, lock- down, opening... enough to wipe out every-one. We are on the road to recovery, a fragile, difficult recovery. The custo- mers are there, they want to fly again, but their expecta- tions have changed a little.
Class & Relax: Jean-Louis Baroux, at APG you are in contact with many airlines.
Jean-Louis Baroux: The air transport industry had embarked on a spiral of impressive volume research and a low price policy, which seemed to me to be suici- dal. This crisis has had the merit of setting the record straight. Looking back over the last fifty years, what strikes me is the quality of air transport, its safety and comfort. Planes like the Nord 262, the Caravelle or the Viscount, which we flew and which have long been in the museum, were far from what we have today!
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~C L A S S & R E L A X L I F E S T Y L E M A G A Z I N E - 2021 ~
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