Abstract
In a context of major climate and sustainability challenges, the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 created a disruption in which some glimpsed opportunities for transformation. This thesis focuses in one of the social life domains that, in view of the literature, needs to be transformed: leisure air travel. It uses the opportunity created by mobility restrictions introduced to contain the spread of the virus to explore whether (and how) vacations performed under previously inconceivable aeromobility disruptions may contribute to transforming vacation practices. This is done from the understanding that transformations are about fundamental change that may be triggered by small changes, and that not all change is transformative. Building on past research on leisure air travel and the literature on transformations, I present a theoretical framework grounded on Social Practice Theories that integrates elements that are key for how transformations play out and moves beyond the structure-agency dichotomy. I use this framework to both explore how vacations changed in response to mobility restrictions and assess how these changes may (or may not) put us in a better position to facilitate long-term reductions in leisure air travel. The framework, which comprises six theoretical mechanisms of change and stability and pays attention to the spatiotemporal location of practices, practice elements and practitioners, was applied on interview data collected among individuals residing in the Oslo area before and after summer 2020 using thematic analysis. Findings suggest that uncoupling air travel from vacations and reducing climate emissions remains a challenge, unless particular conditions are deliberately facilitated. Vacation ideas and reflections upon air travel changed under pandemic restrictions but were not substantially transformed. New flightless vacations have not managed to create path-dependencies and/or new spatiotemporal entanglements and will probably continue to be out-competed by flight-based vacations. Yet, findings also show multiple ways of performing flightless vacations, and the application of the theoretical framework renders visible multiple points of intervention to disrupt perpetuation of flight-based vacations and facilitate flightless performances. Ultimately, findings illustrate that leisure air travel cannot be addressed by appealing to agency or structural barriers alone but demands action at multiple points.