Crises are interesting. They are like a reset button. They separate the good from the bad companies, the financially strong from the weaker once. They show how vulnerable companies can become and how some may have been too reliant on their business model.

It has been such a learning curve for me to see and be part of the crisis management in an airline during Covid. More than 90% of revenue of an airline are typically generated by selling flight tickets -- that's billions of dollars generated every single month which are slashed now. Moreover, perhaps due to shareholder pressure on having to be more focused and efficient on the core business, airlines have hardly ever diversified their business to other financially meaningful business streams. Oh shit.

With zero demand, zero sales, how do you stay alive? Can you turn around things, become nimble and come up with alternative revenue streams? Interestingly, for a start-up, pivoting its business model to market response is a daily drill. For airlines, which have enjoyed an almost monopoly status on transporting people from one country to another for too long, now is the painful time to start thinking and acting like a start-up.

The Post-Covid World will be a very interesting place for the travel industry. I will leave you with some food for thoughts:

Is now the time where the airline industry will take an evolutionary step to transform itself like how the automotive industry embraced asset-light mobility services (aka Uber) and other technological advancements (EV, autonomous driving)? What is the Uber-equivalent of air travel? How can we leverage even more existing airline assets (=planes) and build services on top of them? Against all current beliefs, will we see more creative and innovative travel start-ups emerging? How else could we move people from A to B given current technology limitations? Do we even want to still travel and how do we want to travel?

Reply me, I am curious to hear your thoughts. :)