Albert Uderzo, the creator of one of the most popular comics series Asterix & Obelix, translated in

112 languages and 370 million copies, died yesterday at 92 years old. The opportunity to remember
the key abilities of its lead character, Asterix, and get some lessons for the aviation business facing
its most important crisis.

 Speed – COVID-19 put us in a race for cash, the first and upmost priority for the aviation,
that should drive all short-term decisions in airline operations and lobbying initiatives. As I
already said, more airline should have cut into their network earlier than they were forced
by the global lockout. We are an industry driven by volume, flying empty seats is never a
good option.
 Agility – being in shock in front of the crisis is not going to help. You need to actively prepare
for the de-confinement Day, because do not expect that resuming your planned operations
will work. You need to look at diversify your route portfolio to reach new types of customer
– perhaps smaller market but with higher yield.
 Stamina – we can already forget about April, and for now the expectation to resume
operations in May seems limited. It is the opportunity to rework on your network to save
summer 2020, and it does require lots of work and persistence to find potential market.
Antalya and Majorca are driving lots of volume, but with the short sell period, if you don’t
diversify your offer, expect low fares and small margins, if any…
 Reflexes – disruptions are the new reality, whether we are talking about pandemic, geo-
political issues, earthquake, etc. It requires a more collaborative approach between planning
and operations. Exiting the current crisis will require to capture all external market stimulus
and translate them in your schedule. The seasonality of our industry means that we cannot
afford to miss the ramp up of our operations after de-confinement Day. Because traffic will
not come back immediately, we need to think about flights schedule, aircrafts rotation, new
routes, on a very tactical manner.
 Master Strategist – airline network planner, pricing, revenue manager and globally the
commercial chain within each airline, this is your time now. Because you need to prepare
again and again, reassess, review, analyze, and continue to work all day all day long to
prepare the exit of the crisis. While deteriorating in Europe and North America, the situation
in China and East Asia is improving rapidly.

Summer 2020 will be challenging, with a Winter 20/21 even more difficult, for all airlines the
objective is to accumulate free cash flow as much as possible. The only solution we have is to get
ready for the de-confinement Day. It requires working on multiple scenarios, leveraging your key
guidelines as I highlighted in my previous article No Time to Die, referenced here below. It needs as
well to rework part of your network and reassess your portfolio of destinations.

Christophe

Previous article: No Time to Die, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-die-christophe-ritter/

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