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What happened to transport over the past two weeks


Buses will help you get to those cities where planes and trains will not go. Picture fromSafronov

A “new year regime” was announced across the country, well, that is, a weekend week with working pharmacies, shops and transport. Then he smoothly switched to the mode of something incomprehensible, and then to the mode of self-isolation.

Main statuses:

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  • Authorities asked BlaBlaCar to suspend all trips. This is important because cars provide connectivity to those small towns where there are no bus-train-airplanes.

What happened at the time of border closure - according to travelers


We conducted a qualitative study of what is happening by interviewing 152 people from those who have either recently returned from foreign trips or who are actually in countries that are closing or closing their borders. And yes, we have a professional sociologist in our staff who works with our BI windows and living people. Sentiment now:

  • People refuse to pay for a trip: they rent tickets, tours, cancel reservations in hotels, often losing money spent.
  • They cannot plan their vacation either in the near or in the long term.
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The reasons, in general, are understandable: it was scary not to leave before the start of the karate, or it was scary to stay on the other side due to the closure of the borders of the host country. The study found a man who hollowed out to take a passport to the airport and did not fly to Bulgaria in early March. At first he was upset, but then he became incredibly happy.

This all happened a couple of weeks ago, but it’s already reading like a story. So, people did not understand whether their trip would take place or not: whether the flight was canceled, whether it was necessary to look for “bypass routes” to get to the house. There is not enough data on what to do in such a situation. In practice, embassies react differently, more often they send to airlines. Flights are canceled unexpectedly, often before border closures. In the current situation, many still during the holidays bought expensive tickets home and flew away.

If people are quarantined, then the time they are quarantined in a foreign country is not indicated. Even roughly. They are forced to independently seek and pay for housing, food. Tourists united in chat rooms, send each other information that can be found, options for economical housing, and so on.

“Prices soared three times, and this happened before our eyes: just starting to issue a ticket ... the order breaks down, and the price rises immediately. We called the embassy, ​​advised what to do, thanks at least for moral support. I thought my head would explode, " “I must return to Moscow, but I don’t know how to leave. I called the Russian Embassy in Moldova. They replied, “these are your problems, stay tuned for news”, “They added to the chat for compatriots who did not leave Morocco, - sometimes there are proposals to unite to rent a house together for a more or less reasonable price.”

At airports, there was often a fierce crowd, a stampede, lines and often panic. Everyone hastily introduced precautions as they could. In some places, a citizen of a country other than the country of destination was not allowed on the flight. In this situation, the money was not returned because the flight was not canceled.

From within the countries, the situation also looked rather unusual. Here is an example:
On March 15, all cafes, restaurants, bars, museums were closed in France, and the work of churches was limited. And on March 17, full quarantine was introduced in Paris, from 12 o’clock, people simply did not remain on the streets. I didn’t see it with my own eyes, but they said that the police walked the streets and fined those who stay on the street for no good reason. There were very few people in public transport, we went to the airport on March 18, there were about 20 of us in a huge train, and we and my husband were in our car. People are very scared, the hotel could not have breakfast in the common room, it was possible to take breakfast and go to your room. Empty Paris, which remained in the photo, of course, will forever remain in memory.


The changes are dramatic, here is the difference in one day in Bulgaria:
I am in Bulgaria, arrived two weeks ago, everything is as usual. No one is taking any action. Visually, nothing is visible anywhere except the customs sat in bandages.

The next day in a letter:
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The sociologist’s conclusion: the majority took the quarantine recommendations seriously, talked about their responsible position — they didn’t want to infect relatives and friends, “scare colleagues” at work. On foreign trips, where strict quarantine is in effect, people were afraid to violate it, so as not to get sick and run into fines and the local police themselves. The ability to work from home in Russia was perceived as a great success. Those who do not have such an opportunity - experienced tremendous stress about their future financial situation.

I remind you that we collect up-to-date information on quarantine returns-exchanges here .

What have you done with this?


On the “other side”, tens of thousands of Russian citizens got stuck because of closed borders (there are estimates of up to 100 thousand people). The Ministry of Transport was obliged to work out measures to return them. Indeed, they began to return, for example : “From March 18 to 22, 1,344 people flew from Montenegro to Russia with the flights of the Russian airlines Pobeda, Sibir and Aeroflot, the diplomatic mission said. Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that Russians who did not submit information about themselves to embassies and consulates until March 26 at 2 p.m., when the lists for assisting in return were closed, would have to independently find ways to get home . ”

One of the measures was the board of the "Victory" to Dubai, which was not allowed to board in the UAE.

Another order : “The Ministry of Communications of Russia to organize the creation of a tracking system for citizens in contact with patients with a new coronavirus infection, based on information from mobile operators about the geolocation of a specific person’s cell phone ... Deadline is March 27, 2020.” Here's a good visualization of how it might look in cyberpunk.

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And finally: in Sochi and Karelia people rushed to rest. A plane in Sochi deployed in the air.

In Vladivostok, 12 people fled from the plane .

What else happened?


A new quarantine district has been closed in China because a second wave of infection is possible.

Nashevsuggests that you can independently apply for an electronic sick leave for self-isolation.

Yandex made an excellent self-isolation meter .

Fraudsters switched from the already familiar “This is the bank’s security service, have you made a transfer in the amount of 3,715 rubles to I. Ivanov?” to a fake ticket refund scheme .

People went on weekends (before entering quarantine in many cities) to fry kebabs. Why exactly fry and kebabs? Because the number of grass fires has increased. Here is an example : "In the Voronezh region, 118 fires occurred on the first day of the coronavirus vacation . "

In Kazan introduced SMS pass system.

What happens from the point of view of different market agents?


A week ago we put together something like a huge online press conference on Zoom, here are a few quotes to understand the situation:

Maria Anufrieva, head of FinnAir’s representative office in Russia
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On the one hand, we understand the possibilities now: at the exit from quarantine, the number of trips will increase. On the other hand, many of the carriers will not live this period, plus the absence of tourists during the month will collapse many economies that are used to relying on an influx of people. The biggest risk right now from the passenger’s point of view is to buy a ticket from an airline that will suddenly go broke. Since we are still not a metasearch, but a full-fledged OTA, it is in our interests not to pay those companies that are balancing on the brink. We have quite interesting mechanisms that, based on GDS data, inventory systems and a number of other sources, allow us to determine the “temperature” of the airline. In peacetime, you don’t see it, but we just don’t sell tickets for some dumb companies. This is primarily the protection of their own financial interests,because if the company dies, a chain of debts and customer complaints will arise.

So, now this monitoring will be an important part of the new world, and we will continue to pre-exclude from the search those companies for which there is a risk of ruin.

We have the “100% refund” service, which allows you to convert any ticket of any airline or train into a fully refundable one for a small fee. If you could not go for any reason, then you can get back all the money without question. This is a very interesting combination for low-cost airlines (except for one special one, which is fundamentally not possible to cancel a ticket) and a very good topic for those who like to change plans. So, at the time of border closure, the automatically calculated commission for such magic became comparable to the ticket cost (from which we can conclude that the risk assessment algorithms are correct), and we turned it off in many areas of the air and everywhere by rail. We will return it soon, and it will be possible to buy tickets without fear that they will not be exchanged or returned to you. This will also become part of the world, most likely.

Over the past week, we have simplified returns through a mobile application and redesigned some of the interfaces so that return scripts are easier and the buttons themselves are more noticeable. This, among other things, removed the load on the call center, as it created tickets automatically. Where we could preventively make a refund without waiting for the user’s request (flight cancellation and border closure), we continued to immediately return the money - but such situations became much less, about 8 hundred per week.

Well, this:



Different types of transport reduced the population. Before the start of the self-isolation regime, it was like this: TASS reported about minus 44% of trips in the metro (and there were many pensioners), minus 32% in land transport and in trains, 26% in car sharing, 23% in taxi. Bus trips from the region to Moscow decreased by 26%, while the number of trips by personal transport from the region to Moscow increased by 4%. Later, unconfirmed data came about a decrease in the metro population by about two-thirds.

The number of cancellations for the future is growing by rail, once again a link about canceling 20 trains (out of about a thousand).



Last Friday, sales unexpectedly jumped and were in the region of 55% of planned sales. Most likely, this is due to the fact that many decided to get out for the weekend. But on Saturday and Sunday, people realized that it wasn’t worth it to move forward and sales fell again. Also on Friday, a peak of returns was recorded. Now refunds have gone down again.

This is how the demand for air dropped according to our data (sorry for the artifacts):




Blue is the forecast model, red is the fact.

As I said in the last series, the number of cancellations began to put the call centers of carriers and OTA around the world. With varied success. We had a turning point on Saturday, when we began to process more cancellations and ticket exchanges than ticket drops. This included a new part of the cancellation automation.



It is about 3-6 thousand calls on such issues per day and a long painful return procedure, which is largely done manually from the consoles of inventory and other systems. This is such a dense legacy that it’s just scary. In the middle of last year, we calculated the economic effect of automating part of this story, it turned out to be positive, but the task itself was rather complicated. I mean, not everyone takes it, so you can do it, but you can not do it. And it automates well if 30% of the task. However, we entered the crisis with approximately 15% automation. Now they quickly completed what they could. In theory, this could be scaled by people, but the process of training a second-line employee (and returns is exactly the second) takes two months full-time or about two weeks of intensive training.That is, people cannot be taken and scaled simply. Many asked whether it was necessary to go to the KC to help, but there was no point - they could be taken only to the first line. Yes, the shift was extended to those who agreed to pay overtime, but this is not enough. Why do we think so? Because we observe the work of other call centers in the field of transport and we see that many fell like winter crops.

From the end of the first week, flurries began to be taught in a few days to specific blocks of individuals, dividing the operation into a conveyor process in the spirit: “but the three of you can only do cancellations in a certain GDS”, “the two of you are exchanges in the same GDS” and etc. This also partially helped (railway returns also grew. But they are much easier to do, since we are mainly talking about one point of contact with Russian Railways). It seemed that the situation on appeals had leveled off, but, after the introduction of new events and communications around the country, the load increased again. On March 27-28, the peak of calls came again. Applications have grown to 9 thousand, and before that it would have put us. In addition to automation work, we agreed with some airlines to remove seats from flights, but not to carry out operations in order to process applications a little later.

Over the past week, demand for air has continued to fall. The international has almost all gone, this is a single sale every day: it is almost closed, only in exceptional cases you can fly. Cancellations of flights are actively continuing, including flights within Russia. There is still a big load on the CC, teams help set up automation. The risks of airline closures are growing.

Buses - trips from Moscow and to Moscow fell sharply, now there are about a third of the former traffic.

Electric trains - according to our estimates, the passenger flow in Moscow suburbs crashed 3 times, while the attendance of our schedule for the last week decreased by a few percent.

The current status of closing borders for flights can be found here . Trains here. Well, once again, a link to relevant information on returns-exchanges-virus-quarantines . The last series of transport statuses here.

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