[DrScientist]

I would agree unlikely, but if the virus continues to be a problem, or others emerge then tourism as we know it could come to an end.

Once you have a drop in traffic, the remaining traffic could become more expensive to operate, further reducing demand, making air travel rare rather than everyday again.

It's only cheap now because of the number of people travelling it's a virtuous spiral up, but there is also a sister spiral you can travel down.

[tobylane]

That kind of happened to supersonic travel. We don’t have Concorde any more but we still know how to make them, and there’s a lot of development into unmanned supersonic flight. Now I have a hankering to go to an airplane museum.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Supersonic travel in the Concorde era was never profitable due to expensive aircraft, insane fuel consumption, and sonic booms limiting possible routes. (Yes, BA/AF eventually figured out how to making operating them profitable simply by charging through the nose, but not at sufficient scale to build more planes, much less improve them.)

There are various startups like Boom who think a new generation of supersonics could be a profitable niche, but they were a long shot at best of times and much more so in these times. https://boomsupersonic.com/

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Both planes & fuel are dirt cheap right now. As long as there's demand for travel (which is the real blocker right now), supply will spring up to fill it.