covid: chauffeurs
The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the executive sector hardest, as business travel and events work have dried up
Chauffeurs in crisis Mark Bursa
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IVERSIFICATION INTO HOME deliveries, courier work and key worker transport has been a business lifeline for many private hire fleets, but the executive chauffeuring sector has found it much harder to access this sort of work – with a £70,000 car it’s a lot tougher to make low-cost jobs pay. Meanwhile, the lifeblood of the chauffeuring sector has all but dried up. Companies report their business is down more than 90% as business travel, corporate events, financial roadshows, trade shows, dinners, big-ticket sporting events and overseas tourists have dwindled to a trickle as the UK – and the world – lurches from lockdown to lifting and back to lockdown again. Hopes of an effective vaccine in the coming months are strong,
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but most industry watchers are pessimistic as to when – if ever – the business travel market will return to the “normal” levels of 2019. Data from the airline industry compiled by research firm Cirium makes grim reding. Weekly average flight arrivals in Europe are running 67% below last year’s level, and rising Covid-19 cases and re-imposed national lockdowns in countries including France and the UK have prompted many of the region’s airlines to cut capacity and return some aircraft to storage. More than 8,000 airliners are currently in storage, and many will never return to service. Almost all operators of the Boeing 747-400 have retired their fleets, replacing them with smaller, more economical twin-jets on intercontinental routes. So even if the timetables return to 2019 frequencies, the capacity is likely to be lower.
David Pryor
Meanwhile, corporations are adjusting to a working-from-home environment, and many are finding no drop in productivity as a result. Indeed, some are finding greater efficiency through videoconferencing – a technology that will improve as 5G networks are rolled out, offering highdefinition Zoom and Teams chats. This is not helpful for the chauffeur sector. Already we have seen major London fleets such as Carey making substantial cuts to their active fleets – from 200 cars last year, the company is believed to be running around 30 now. Many independent chauffeurs have called it a day, with a lot of the older, and often most experienced, drivers choosing early retirement. For operators, it’s been a case of cutting the business back to the bone, or worse, winding up the company and starting again.
NOVEMBER 2020
