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Shumita: This is The Takeaway and I'm Shumita Basu in for Tanzina Vega who's out on maternity leave. She'll be back next week. It's good to be here with you. You've been on a flight lately? I'm going to guess the answer is probably no. At the start of 2020, air travel was doing great business. According to CNBC, just months ago, the airline industry had reached its highest employment level in more than 16 years. Today with a roughly 90% drop in air travel compared to a year ago, the industry has suffered dramatic economic losses.

$25 billion in federal relief is being provided to airlines as part of the CARES Act under the condition that companies do not reduce pay rates or lay off employees, but many of the major airlines have cut their worker's hours in response to the lower demand in flights. While in recent weeks, airlines have started to see a slight increase in business. Many people in the United States just aren't ready to travel long distances on planes or other means like trains. We're hearing from you on this. How comfortable would you feel getting on an airplane right now?

Speaker 3: It's Lee calling from [unintelligible 00:01:45], Florida. We do not feel comfortable traveling right now, which is the shame, because we've got a gorgeous three-year-old granddaughter in Montana and we would love to play out the fear.

Scott: My name is Scott and I live on Vashon Island near Seattle. Tomorrow, I'm flying to Boston from Sea-Tac. I have no concerns about my safety as I have heard that the airlines are taking excellent care of passengers. All passengers are required to wear a mask as is the staff and the Jackson Airports are cleaned rigorously every day. I will be careful, wash my hands, and take all precautions. I'm not at all afraid.

Lisa: Hi, my name is Lisa Brown. I'm calling from Seattle. I would be very nervous about getting on an airplane or a train unless it was required that every passenger had their temperature checked before getting on board and as long as everybody wore a mask through the whole trip. Since I see that it's not terribly likely right now, I'm going to be doing all of my travel by car.

Shumita: Keep those calls coming at us at 877-8-MY-TAKE. Joining me now is Benét J. Wilson, an editor at the travel website, The Point’s Guy. It's great to have you, Benét.

Benét: Thank you for having me.

Shumita: Also with us is Leslie Josephs an airline reporter at CNBC. Thanks for coming back on the show, Leslie.

Leslie: Thanks for having me.

Shumita: Leslie, you heard there, our last caller said she won't be getting on a plane unless it's required that every passenger gets their temperature checked and wears a mask. Are either of those measures being required by airlines right now?

Leslie: So far major US airlines are requiring masks. That's a new change that started this month. The challenge with that is how do you enforce it? Will they kick someone off of a flight? Are they going to divert the flight? Probably not, the airlines are telling their cabin crews, don't essentially create a big fuss if a passenger refuses but try to talk to them. These flight attendants are trained in de-escalation. It is a requirement. The airlines are telling people do not come on board without a mask, try to wear them in common areas like ticket counters and gates near the plane but they're limited in what they can do because this isn't a federal rule.

Shumita: Exactly. That was actually my next point. There's no federal body that's setting the regulations for this?

Leslie: The federal agencies that handle air travel and public health have been discussing this the Department of Homeland Security under which TSA sits is looking at potential passenger temperature checks maybe thermal scanning that we've seen in some other airports around the world, are starting to see, but nothing has been done yet so it's this hot potato of which agency is handling what and what we've seen from FAA, what we've seen from the department of transportation and even the CDC is recommendations, which only go so far.

Shumita: Benét, what is the experience of traveling on an airplane and traveling through an airport like right now?

Benét: It's a lot less crowded. You come in, people have masks on. Most of the workers do have masks on, people are trying to avoid the chaos. I'm a person that uses my phone for my boarding pass and I don't check a bag so I don't have to worry about that. Different rules about spacing through security lines, some lines are empty and some lines I've seen photos of just normal TSA lines.

Then after you go through, depending on the airport, some of the gate hold areas can look a little crowded, food areas, I was working on a story about this, airports are still trying to work out their regulations on how to keep people socially distant in restaurants and in food courts. Then once you get on the plane, we've all seen that famous photo of United, the packed flight after-

Shumita: Every single seat was filled on that flight.

Benét: Yes. After, the airline said they were going to try and do some social distancing, although I don't know how you can do that, it's something that should be done, but realistically that's going to be a challenge.

Shumita: We talked a little bit earlier about the federal stimulus money. Leslie, how much of a lifeline has that stimulus been for the airline industry?

Leslie: That's definitely helping them keep the stay afloat, but the airlines were also going to the bond market and raising some equity sales and looking for other ways that they could raise money and they've raised billions. There is appetite to lend money from private markets to airlines.

But that money and the reason why it's important is because it requires airlines to keep their entire staff through September 30th and they can't cut their pay rates so their hourly wages are still remaining the same. After September 30th that's when things are starting to get dicey and even into the summer because often employees have to be warned when there's a big layoff coming under state rules. It is helping them stay afloat but the summer is the most important season for airlines.

The second and third quarters, the most lucrative for them, summer vacations that's when probably airports are usually most miserable and the planes are at their fullest but after that point, it's a big question mark. What happens after that? Some of the executives are already starting to let employees know we expect to be smaller airlines coming out of this and it is possible that they do have involuntary furloughs and layoffs.

Shumita: I know. I've been seeing some tantalizingly cheap flight deals in the past few weeks. Benét are these deals calling you or are you staying away from them?

Benét: They are very, very tempting. I'm a person who loves to travel, but I am not quite comfortable enough yet to pull the trigger.

Shumita: What can we think about in terms of the long-term for passenger costs?

Benét: This is going to have to be paid for somehow. The cleaning of the plane, the extra cleaning, the money is going to have to come from somewhere, and 9 times out of 10 that comes with airfare. I would not be surprised after the summer once things have calmed down that we start seeing airfares rise.

Shumita: Right. Leslie, I'm thinking about the transition away from person-to-person contact happening in airports. How can we expect this to affect airline security?

Leslie: The TSA is starting to think about this, but it's a very difficult thing to trace. You can screen people for temperatures, which of course is a symptom of COVID, and maybe weed out people that are over 100.4 degrees. Then also, maybe if someone is sick that even just going through that might be a deterrent, but it's not really clear yet what it's going to look like.

It's still up for debate. Like I said, the Department of Homeland Security is looking at those kinds of screenings. We're not at a point where people are getting mass tested for COVID or mass temperature checked at the airport, but it is likely to add some time to the security check and also keeping that social distance and airport security lines. They're trying to space people out, maybe some checkpoints have closed, because the demand for air travel has been so low and is likely to stay low compared to historical levels for a long time.

Even with the uptick that we've seen, I think we're still off like 90% from where we were a year ago, the start of the summer, spring, and summer travel season, so it is likely to add some time to the process.

Shumita: Yes, and do any of the changes that are happening right now raise any new concerns for you when it comes to passenger privacy or even cybersecurity?

Leslie: Airlines have been looking at things like facial scanning instead of a boarding pass for a bit, which has raised privacy concerns and other issues. Since it's a public health crisis and one that has destroyed air travel demand pretty much like nothing else that we've ever seen, airlines are really pushing the safety angle and looking at things like immunity passports, which aren't necessarily around the corner, but once we get mass testing, it's still possible.

Travellers, they have always had to weigh with air travel, have had to weigh privacy versus convenience and that's going to be a question that every traveler faces when they go off on a trip

Shumita: All right. When you say immunity passports, you're referring to people who have gotten testing for antibodies and maybe have been cleared for having antibodies. How are airlines thinking about that? Is that immunity testing really seen as something that they can give people immunity pass on?

Leslie: I don't think that they will want to do any of the testing but it could be something that could be required possibly down the line. It is somewhat theoretical in its very early days with testing as well. If you have the antibodies, are you guaranteed to never get or transmit COVID again? Those are some of the questions, like how effective is it to even have somebody cleared? It raises all sorts of other issues.

Shumita: Yes, yes. Benét, what do you think might be some of the long-term changes to the air travel experience based on this? A lot of people look back at September 11th as a time when we completely revamped how we go through security. What might we see come out of this?

Benét: I think we're going to see a lot more of social distancing as a requirement. I'm saying we're going to see the spots on the floor, we're going to see a lot of more self-help options as far as checking bags and checking in and everything. I think we'll see more people using their mobile phones to do all of these processes. I think we'll see spacing in gate hold areas, although with some older airports that might cause some issues.

I also think we will see the way the airport operates as far as foods and airport lounges. There's going to be a lot of changes. You're not going to be able to go up to the soda machine and just get your soda anymore, things like that.

Shumita: Actually, you wrote about how there are some new vending machines in airports now with face masks and other sorts of things.

Benét: Yes, Las Vegas Airport started a vending machine that has N95 masks, Clorox wipes, hand gloves, all kinds of things.

Shumita: We'll have to leave it there. Benét J. Wilson is an editor at the travel website, The Points Guy, and Leslie Josephs is an airline reporter at CNBC. Thank you both.

Leslie: Thank you.

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