For fairly obvious reasons, the REM song, “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” has been haunting my brain of late. It could be a whole lot worse of course, something like, ‘Super Trouper’ by ABBA for example! Aagh!

But the inescapable fact is that REM had it right. Few industries will be as inexorably changed by current events as travel “as we know it”: Just about every travel sector, will have to make major changes and all the talk about how long it will take to, “return to normality” is a bit of a pipe dream. There’s going to a whole new ‘normal’ and getting there will take a lot of abnormal trial and error before we figure out what it will look like and be acceptable enough to get people travelling again.

In the air travel sector, many of the ‘old ways’ were already way overdue for a rethink. So if, “Every COVID Has a Silver Lining,” some much needed innovations may be moved into high gear.

The processing of international arrivals at major airports would be good place to start. Arriving internationally at peak times in the likes of YVR, YYZ JFK or LHR has been unacceptably arduous for a very long time and some of the attempts at a fix have achieved very little. In Canada for instance, when a friendly Dalek-like kiosk takes your picture and swallows your landing card only to print another, why does everyone then have to get in another line to present it to a, usually even more robotic, immigration officer?

Imagine an ‘enhanced’ (a word that usually means ‘even worse’) version of this with two-meter distancing, mandatory questioning about where you have been for the previous month and probably a temperature scan/health assessment. Fun huh?

So how else can it be done? More pre-clearance at points of origin would be one answer. With today’s technology, using video conferencing, there has to be a way to do this without needing to post immigration officers overseas. If you’re flying from Frankfurt to Toronto you should be able to check in at a computer terminal and click through remotely to a Canadian Border Services Agent. Moving the ‘Dalek’ to the departure point would greatly reduce the need for lengthy interactions with the authorities on arrival. And, if someone is refused entry to Canada, they wouldn’t yet have left their country of origin.

Airport departures will not be any easier to improve. Assuming there’s no need to stagger the number of vehicles entering drop-off and pick-up areas at any given time, how will existing terminal capacity at check-in, bag-drop and security processing areas cope with any attempt at on-going social distancing?

Even if not mandated, it might take quite some time for people to get comfortable with literally rubbing shoulders with complete strangers from all over the world while they stand in a security line for 30 minutes or more. To accommodate this maybe the profusion of Tee shirt and inflatable neck-rest retail outlets will have to give way to passenger slow-shuffle lanes? Frequent flyers will be able to access the ‘Not Quite as Slow’ lane.

The typical airline boarding process has been badly broken for a long time. When priority-boarding groups regularly account for 75% of the passengers, something ain’t right.

Lots of study has gone into this over the years but none has produced a universally accepted solution. Zone boarding, rear-end first boarding, widow seats first, all have their shortcomings. In the new world, some system of, “Please come forward to board only when your row number is called” would reduce lineups in the jet-bridge and aisle.

But possibly the best news emerging is that the dreaded middle seat may – at least temporarily – become a thing of the past. It will still be there, but unless a family of three wants to sit together it’s going to be a while before anyone is again going to accept being squeezed into a middle seat between two strangers – a situation that surely defines the very antithesis of ‘social distancing’.

Some carriers have already stopped selling the middle seat but with decimated schedules and load factors of 20%, this is more symbolic than philanthropic. What happens when airplanes start to fill up again? Taking the middle seat out of the inventory could mean reducing the sellable capacity of a single-aisle aircraft by as much as a third and would push ticket prices up to compensate for the shortfall. Clearly this is not a long-term solution.

But the seating across a row is only part of the potential ‘new normal’ problem. Most airlines’ economy cabins now have a seat pitch of between 28 and 30 inches. This means there are other people in front and behind whose heads (as well as coughs and sneezes) are less than three feet away. It’s kind of reminiscent of the old smoking sections where smoking and non-smoking rows were immediately adjacent. As some instant market research I just asked my 19-year-old son how he feels about flying back to college in North Carolina in September. His eyes widened as he responded, “Really Dad? Couldn’t you drive me – Please! It’s only about 600 miles.”

Clearly, even in the short term, removing seats is not going to be the answer: Certainly not, if the leisure/VFR markets are ever going to be able to afford to fly again. One comfort factor should come from new standards of aircraft cleanliness and sanitization that will likely become mandatory. It will mean extended aircraft turn times but in Canada this hopefully might be offset by reductions in government taxes, fees and airport charges that for years have been among the highest in the world.

As we all tend to be creatures of habit, the idea of “change” is frequently seen in a negative light. In this case however, the vast majority of the changes to the airline and airport experience resulting from the current crisis could prove to be that silver lining. The one big change we should probably anticipate is that the wearing of masks in airports and on airlines will become a mandatory piece of travel-wear. If so, expect Gucci, Polo, Chanel et al to start churning them out – as will the likes of Canadian Tire and President’s Choice. And how long before we hear snickers like, “OMG, look, they’re wearing Dollarama masks!”

So, to quote the full final line from REM, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” I sincerely hope that all of you do too.