Low cost carriers might just be the right model for the post-Covid world, said Scoot’s CEO Campbell Wilson, but recovery is still some distance away.

Speaking at CAPA’s virtual Australia Pacific Aviation Summit, Wilson (pictured) suggested “this is a good time to be an LCC for a few good reasons”.

“One, we are typically point-to-point operators and not hugely reliant on hub aggregation. Two, we mostly carry leisure and are not so reliant on corporate budgets and business class travel; three, typically it’s regional travel so it’s close to home and people’s risk perception follows familiarity – household budgets, annual leave, quotas will all play into regional travel; four, it is low-touch service model and people don’t like touch at the moment; it’s lower cost and lower price.

“For all those reasons, at the moment, I feel the LCC model is probably going to recover faster and more strongly than perhaps the full-service model, but obviously contingent on borders being open and people being able to travel,” said Wilson.

But here is where the harsh reality emerges. Wilson said he doesn’t see a rapid recovery in this area since almost all the borders remain closed. “We started out with a lot of optimism, but we’ve been disappointed repeatedly throughout the past nearly eight months,” he said.

Read the full story here