When will you be able to travel again? When will Middle Eastern airlines resume assessment days and training for those on-hold?

The short question is when will the COVD19 pandemic will end. In March and April this year, we see so many countries going into lockdown. There are also fears that there could be a second wave.

Take a country like Singapore where cases grew from 266 to over 6,000. The city state closed its borders to all foreigners at the start of February and meticulously tracked anyone who might have the virus. It kept infection rates under full control and everyone around the world looked up to Singapore for its effective and successful active tracing and tight control over anyone who even displayed the slightest coronavirus symptom. Singapore was applauded by the world for its early coronavirus response. While other countries were starting to impose strict lockdowns, Singapore’s contact tracing and partial lockdown made it the world’s success story with only a very light partial lockdown. In early April, a second wave struck, and it has now lost control of the outbreak. Tens of thousands of migrant workers, have been asked to quarantine in dormitories to prevent the spread and the whole country is now in full lockdown. Singapore has announced a few days ago that stricter measures would be put in place until at leat 1 June with a further review then. In the last 4 days alone, Singapore has recorded more than 3,000 cases. This now makes Singapore the highest number of cases in South East Asia. Many of these new infections have been traced back to poorly-kept over crowded migrant dormitories located on the fringes of the city state, which have been described as a time bomb waiting to explode.

When can we expect some return to normality? The answer depends in large part on uncertainties about the coronavirus and whether you can get it more than once. The costs of prolonged shutdown and what different countries can afford, from both an economic and political standpoint are factors to consider also.

Lockdown slows the spread and the idea is to prevent a huge burst of infections that overwhelms the medical system. This is what we call flattening the curve. It buys the government time to build capacity for mass testing, contact tracing, expand hospital facilities including ventilators and getting PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) supplies.

Lifting restrictions too early could risk a second wave as we have seen in Singapore. Widespread testing is important for lifting restrictions. People can appear normal, go about their daily work yet spread the virus. Scientists are also developing a test that looks at antibodies to see if they can re-infect. The virus is lethal and insidious and can spread easily on aircrafts and crowded places. Infection tracking and testing is the only proper exit strategy we can have. The fear is the second wave returning if we lift the barriers too soon.

Let us consider Europe and the countries there which are considering lifting the restrictions. So far, countries in Europe have been reporting declines in new COVID19 cases and the governments air lifting some prohibitions. New infections have plateaued in Italy, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Iceland. These countries are slowly lifting restrictions to return to work and announcing other measures to resuscitate their economies. But they have been very cautious in case they get another Singapore on their doorsteps. There is consensus that things should reopen step by step and segment by segment in a two to three stage plan.

What about flights and border controls? It will be at least another month or so before opening borders and may be permitting short flights.

While vast flights in April and May have been cancelled excluding repatriation flights, airlines including Emirates are hoping to resume operations in July and August. However, this is just positive thinking on the assumption that countries may be opening up their borders to allow them to fly foreigners in. For some scientists and experts, they have voiced that overseas travel for most of us may not be possible anytime soon.

Emirates and other airlines have announced on board social distancing by barring use of middle seats and of course this helps in having the aviation industry return to normal soon. Many airlines are now considering installing different forms of COVID19 testing to reduce infection on board aircrafts. Emirates, which claims to be the first airline to perform these tests, now intends to scale up its capabilities until they are available before any flight to destinations requiring the Covid-19 test certificates currently under consideration by countries such as Germany and the U.K

We expect domestic flights to resume first before international bookings are allowed. Long haul flights may be reintroduced later in the year but the focus will be to first have short haul flights.

The UK government has asked all citizens not to book summer holidays and said it is unlikely for domestic or overseas trip to be relaxed during this period but have not given a date or time range. Each country will make its own decisions. With so many countries in lockdowns and different levels of returning to normal again, this makes air travel and planning quite an impossible task.

For those of you attending the online interviews, bear in mind that this will be followed-up with a full assessment day and the final interview for this that pass their group tests. The obstacles to holding assessment days are based on countries permitting travel and releasing border controls. Looking at this in an optimistic way, when domestic flights return with lifting of smaller group gatherings, this may be possible. Your recruiters that will see you are likely to be based in your country, and those attending the assessment day will be from countries close by. Yes, this is possible if domestic restrictions on travel are released in about two months from now.

It is a difficult and challenging period but I have written this article to help those who want to stay positive in this lockdown period and also want to know how long the wait will be. It is based on what we know today and it does not reveal actual answers in terms of time lines but a close forward prediction of an estimate time line is the best we can have today. For added comfort, even the airlines do not know when they can start their operations.

For the time being, focus on your CV and interview techniques. The aviation industry will rebound when borders start to open.

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