And Now A Word from Our Airlines….
Just today, the CEO of Delta Air Line, Ed Bastian, gave his viewpoint on the return of flight. “In [my] 20 years dealing with crisis, business travel has always come back stronger than anticipated despite what critics say.” Delta’s president, Glen Hauenstein confirmed the worst is over and said the company believes the pandemic's impact on business travel would be behind them in two years or more. “With a slow and steady build in demand, we are restoring flying to meet our customers’ needs, while staying nimble with our capacity in light of COVID-19.”
Hauenstein concedes that, “While it may be two years or more until we see a normalized revenue environment, by restoring customer confidence in travel and building customer loyalty now, we are creating the foundation for sustainable future revenue growth.”
Let me repeat Mr. Hauenstein’ s key point here. We must RESTORE consumer confidence. But how? By working alongside the airline and hotel efforts. We must be singing from the same sheet of music and since we have a program that is earning praise from the White House to the School House, I urge you to do your research (www.SafeCleanRidecert.com). This is the only frontline training and testing program available to the transportation industry – including school, commuter, luxury, taxi, trucking, military/government, hospitality and corporate fleets. And, the GCLA recently endorsed it which is exciting news in and of itself.
Today I participated on a strategy panel with Scott Calhoun, P.E., PMP, USDOT Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Transportation, Dr. Jonathan Yoder, Lead of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) team and COVID-19 Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (joined by his team) and two of the SafeCleanRide advisory panelists, Dr. Amesh Adalja, Ph.D., Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, Dr. Dennis Harp, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Vice President of Food Safety and Quality Assurance. They are all extremely enthusiastic about SCR and its mission to help mitigate risks associated with infectious and contagious disease through education.
The objective of our meeting was to review the best path forward in getting the SafeCleanRide program adopted by states and within all markets. The great news for transportation – that includes YOU – is that this program exists. I am personally involved. From the inception of SCR in April, I worked with the Advisory panel and the training/testing company’s teams along with dozens of other health groups and focus groups to bring this program to life and deliver it to you. We now must educate our employees, our affiliates, our customers, our communities, our airports and municipalities. Importantly, I encourage you to expose SCR to your insurers since training and certificated testing programs can help lower business liability expenses.
The airlines and the hotels are making the same efforts here. They too are working on certificated program, albeit they are much more complex and thus taking much longer. That just means transportation is ahead of the curve and we will be that much more prepared as travel continues to come back. Delta's CEO Ed Bastian stated that, “Roughly 90% of its primary corporate customers have business travelers who are traveling in small numbers, but are getting their own sense for what the new travel experiences is." The recovery has begun.
Stay Safe,
Sara Eastwood Richardson
