NZ could move to level 1 next week.

[harm_less]

IATA are predicting a five year wait for air travel to get back to normal and the price of international travel is likely to be much higher that pre-COVID levels as airlines move to regain the substantial costs they have suffered in the moth-balling and recommissioning of their fleets. There will also be fewer airlines operating so competition will be limited. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programme...years-iata

The days of flying across the world for a couple of thousand dollars are now history IMO and tourism will be a very different beast when/if it restarts.

IDK, thats not going to help the airline industry much.
On the flipside, oil prices are record low and they are paying to make people take it away as they have no storage.
Those costs should be passed down to consumers.
If airlines want to make profit, they need to fill up their planes fast.
This also means that hotels will likely need to lower their fees as an incentive to get tourists to come back, that way it may offset the cost on going on an overseas trip.

The overriding factor will be how long the world takes to get on top of COVID. Until such time that we get herd immunity, which is probably reliant on a reliable vaccine which looks like being mid 2021 at the earliest at this stage, countries will need to maintain quarantines on oncoming passengers. As the IATA guy suggests this pretty much kills the demand for international tourism and in the meantime airlines are hemorrhaging money (Air NZ $5m/day currently) which they will need to recoup at some stage. Also, while there remains a COVID risk the public will be hesitant to travel at any rate.

Oil prices will lighten the debt burden to some extent but fuel is far from the only expense involved in running an airline.

According to our own, and our shipping agent's, experience airfreighting prices are currently running at 2-5x the pre-COVID rates which may also be some indication of where passenger prices are likely to settle in the short term at least, particularly if planes are being flown half empty due to either lack of demand or passenger distancing measures.