Reaching down deep into our individual stamina and collective fortitude which has made our industry great over the years, we desperately need to turn our attention away (even if only temporarily) from what we have been inundated with from the media and find some areas in which we can all express our gratitude and appreciation while at the same time being optimistic for the future.
Gratitude and appreciation for the courageous cadre of first responders and health care professionals who are quite literally putting themselves in a direct line of fire on an hourly basis by treating those who have fallen victim to this pandemic.
Heartfelt appreciation to those pilots and cabin crew, air traffic controllers, airport authority employees, and ground handling personnel who are leaving their own families and going to work in order to keep the aviation industry partially functional sometimes equipped with only masks, gloves, and ID badges. All of these individuals are true heroes to whom we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Even in these dark times, there is room for legitimate optimism with regard to what we, as an industry, have learned thus far and more importantly, what we can do to avoid finding ourselves in the same untenable position in the future.
I believe that there are specific, effective, and realistic measures that we can put in place in the near-term so as to better prepare the aviation industry to combat the myriad of yet to be imagined health hazards to our passengers, colleagues, and employees going forward.
I believe that there is significant business value to be realized through greater collaboration and communication between aviation industry decision makers and the medical profession in general and those practitioners and researchers directly involved with infectious diseases in particular.
I believe that we desperately need greater collaboration between aviation industry professionals and the medical profession in general and those practitioners and researchers directly involved with infectious diseases in particular.
I believe that we need to decide among ourselves, with the valuable input of medical experts, what success will look like when the bio-risk of COVID-19 is deemed to be under control and normal operations can be safely commenced and maintained.
There is a myriad of lessons to be learned from these past weeks and even more things to be accomplished in order for us to move quickly into the future. This will take time to accomplish, but as we all know from our self-quarantine experiences, time is a commodity that we seem to have a great deal of these days.