ZeroTT

You’re fighting a straw man. The threat isn’t face to face being dead. Chapter 7 is from face to face recovering slowly

kevin18

Have a friend that’s a top executive at a fortune 5 company. They’ve invested tens of millions of dollars into teleconferencing. Not zoom, Skype, or whatever is the free stuff. They’re making their own networks that link independently. It’s high quality, and likely not going anywhere for a long time. If that’s one, I’m sure the others are doing it.

That doesn’t mean all their business travel is going away, and a significant portion will not be traveling for meetings that would have been face to face.

rickair7777

Zoom is useful to maintain and extend ESTABLISHED relationships. It's no good for building new relationships, or dealing with relationship crises (ie troubleshooting). It will work for a while but not forever... eventually salesmen need to make calls, managers need to visit remote operations, and eventually workgroups will want their team-building retreats again.

For some business travels (the road warriors) travel is part of the grind. For many others, it's actually a reward to go to a convention, conference, or retreat.

I'd actually be more worried if I was in commercial real estate right now. I could see an evolving scenario where some business go mostly remote and maintain smaller office spaces for necessary in-person meetings, and simply rent facilities for all hands assembly type events. but that depends on the nature of the work and the nature of the employees. Data entry drudge-work vice complex project management? Low wage/low motivation staff vs. highly educated and credentialed professionals?

Flyhayes

Teleconferencing is only going to get better and better from here on out. And covid is probably the thing that is going to force the most change in that segment. Right now the teleconferencing companies have a captive audience. To keep that audience they need to improve upon those services. Things are likely to change as the collective echos of covid lingers. More people/companies are going to find working from home a good alternative. It doesn't replace face to face, completely.
Also we'll probably see more of this as a generational thing. Young adults today are very plugged into digital "face-to-face" for them it won't be a stretch to tele-anything. In fact it may be what they are most comfortable with.

highfarfast

Working from home does not replace business travel on airplanes. It replaces the commute to the office in a car.

kevin18

No, but 1Gbps does. That is a significant difference between the early teens and now. The bandwidth available at home is exponentially greater. Meaning that high quality video conferencing is available. Add to that digital signatures and you’ve got business meetings at home. Obviously not all will do that, and a vast portion of the businesses will substitute their travel budget for an IT budget.

ZeroTT

It will work for a while but not forever - that exactly describes the US airline industry. They not only need business to come back, they need it to come back at a certain rate. Things (ie zoom, which I use as a shorthand for any telepresence option) that slow down the rate of demand rise are a real threat. Saying "eventually ..." isn't relevant. At current rate, eventually every airline is gonna furlough 2/3 of their pilots and then hit chapter 11.

Excargodog

I have some friends/ college buds who work at a major aircraft and defense manufacturer (that isn’t Airbus) specifically in project management. COVID sort of forced work at home initially, but after a few months the company polled them to see if they would LIKE to continue working from home because productivity was actually increased. And an overwhelming majority were happy to give up the five hours a week of commuting in Seattle traffic. And the company was happy to decrease their commercial property footprint In a town that is becoming increasingly anti-business. Pretty much a win-win.

Now if they could only get their factory workers to stop leaving The damn FOD in the fuel tanks on their tankers...

tallpilot

What do you think caused that? Lazy or improperly trained line workers or managers pushing productivity so hard that critical steps are being skipped?

Fortunately because of this mess it looks like I'll be flying old junk for a while but it worries me that 787 wiring harnesses are being abrated by metal shavings because some clown couldn't be bothered to take 30 seconds with a shop vac.

I'm also 100% positive that airlines don't conduct the sort of pre/post delivery inspections the military does. So whatever the military is finding is in civilian airliners but is being ignored. Maybe now is a good time since they are all parked and mechanics need some hours.

05Duramax

Do you know how much of the non Airbus company footprint is in actual Seattle? Like almost none. Nice job pushing your political agenda though.