Airways companies must take part in the international solidarity campaign in fighting COVID-19

   After I got two flights canceled while I was in Bangkok, the airline company claimed that the danger of the widespread of Covid-19 cracked down on the flights' movement from Bangkok to other destinations in the world. But it also turned out that such suspension in the work of the airlines has been paralyzed in many airports around the globe following the announcement of the World Health Organization (WHO) that all countries must abide by the rules for preventing the spread of the virus. 

These flight companies as other companies, corporations or businesses are encountered with a new reality of losing profits even their financial assets that are blocked and allocated for encountering such crisis in order to avoid bankruptcy, have also been threatened, as many companies began to show indication of bankruptcy as a result of augmenting debts. 

This outcome of shutting down strategy that all aspects; companies, stores, malls, etc. either locally or internationally were obligatory asked to follow it aiming at thwarting down the spread of Covid-19. Consequently, those aspects are incurring huge financial losses as the purchasing and selling process is totally frozen to most of these aspects, except for the food industry or food business is still operating and so as clinics and hospitals. 

In this crisis, airlines that are still operating, which is very necessary for some to keep operating as there are still many people stuck in foreign countries are in dire need of going back to their homelands. So the aviation movement should not be completely suspended. Otherwise, people will stay stuck in foreign countries grappling with different issues like, the overstay, paying expenses for accommodation and other things for an unexpected period of time, especially students who had not expected this pandemic will force the world to shut many parts down. Therefore, their financial budgets might not afford to overstay in a foreign country. Indeed, Corona crisis turned everything upside down; people can not predict what would occur in the next few weeks, can not earn more money due to losing their jobs, can not get sponsored due to the aspects that used to finance them are not operating anymore, so on and so forth.

Therefore, in this challenging time, solidarity is very important for backing each other up and alleviating the suffering of people as much as possible that results in financial hardships. For instance, airline companies that are still operating should keep the prices of their tickets fixed. However, what I have found out based on the latest experience from Bangkok, is that airline companies exploited the dire need of people to go back to their homelands to see their beloved ones, as there are no many competitors, those companies have an absolute strategy of manipulating with the ticket prices applying what so-called Auction Off system. Of course, the earlier you book the cheaper you get rule is applicable, but these companies must realize the fact that many people have gotten their flights canceled and ended up waiting for the refund, which is very difficult to get sometimes companies have very strict refund policies that push you to wait for a long time to get and even some of them do not directly refund their customers even though the cancelation was made by the airline, they just provide a voucher to the clients to use the same ticket as a credit to fly with the same airline within a limited period of time. By this way, clients are forced to fly next time with the same airline, but those clients might not be in need of travel during the limited period, what should they do? Will they lose their money? What about those who have gotten two or three or more flights canceled and have no more money to book another flight? 

They will be stuck until the airline refund or change their flight without extra fee. That is really tricky. Moreover, the prices swiftly increase, like what happened when I suddenly found a very good offer by the Qatar Airway for 493$ from Bangko to Frankfurt, the next I headed off to purchase this ticket to find out that overnight had become 1340$. I could not purchase it, I had to postpone my travel back to Germany until I find a more affordable ticket. This was unprecedented exploitation! 

Those flight companies should take part in solidarity around the world and keep their prices stable