general

Airlines are suspending flights to China in the wake of the new coronavirus outbreak. Story has full list as of Friday.<br/>

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued rules Sunday to implement new restrictions on Americans who have recently visited China to address the threat of the coronavirus. Airline officials said Sunday the new rules will mean they must now ask all US-bound passengers if they have visited mainland China. Airlines are expected to scrutinise passports of travellers, and warned the new rules could require passengers to arrive even earlier for US-bound flights. American Airlines said Sunday it encouraged US-bound passengers “to arrive at the airport three hours early as we expect this additional screening will lengthen the normal check-in process.” The US said Friday that for flights departing after 5 p.m. EST Sunday, it will bar entry to nearly all foreign visitors who have been in China within the last two weeks. The Trump administration is limiting flights from China and for Americans who have visited China within the last 14 days to eight major US airports for enhanced screening: New York’s JFK, Chicago’s O’Hare, San Francisco, Seattle-Tacoma, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dulles in Washington, DC. Three more airports - Newark, Dallas/Fort Worth and Detroit - would be added on Monday, DHS announced on Sunday. The new rules do not impact cargo-only flights, DHS said. American Airlines temporarily halted all flights to mainland China on Friday, while Delta said Sunday its last flight had departed China before it planned resumption of flights in May. United is scheduled to continue China flights through Wednesday before halting flights through March 27.<br/>

Amid cancelled flights, tightening global travel restrictions and looming plans to quarantine Americans returning from China, the tension at a handful of airports still receiving flights from the country mounted on Sunday as travellers described a scramble for the few remaining tickets out of China and federal officials readied military bases to house hundreds of people potentially exposed to the deadly coronavirus. Under new federal rules that apply to US-bound flights that take off after 5 p.m. Eastern time, American citizens who have been in China’s Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, in the last 14 days will be subject to a quarantine of up to two weeks. Military bases said they were expecting to house about 1,000 such “evacuees.” Other US citizens who have visited mainland China will undergo a health screening and can be ordered to quarantine in their homes for up to 14 days, according to the Homeland Security Department. Under the restrictions announced by the Trump administration on Friday, foreign nationals who have been in China in the last two weeks will “generally” be denied entry into the US. Federal officials said the rules were necessary to minimize the risk of the disease spreading further in the US, where nine cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed so far, including one in the San Francisco area on Sunday. All American citizens who have traveled in China within 14 days of their arrival home to the United States will be directed to one of 11 major airports in New York, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Honolulu, Atlanta or outside Washington. There have been nine confirmed cases in the US, but no deaths. Anxiety is intense at airports.<br/>

Taiwan is asking its diplomats to talk to governments where Taiwanese airlines fly to ensure more flights are not cut off due to the island’s inclusion by the WHO as part of China due to the coronavirus outbreak. Taiwan has only reported 10 cases, compared to more than 14,000 in China, but as the WHO considers self-ruled Taiwan part of China, it has included it in its advice that China is “very high risk”. Taiwan is not a member of the WHO due to Chinese objections. China considers democratic Taiwan its own territory with no right to participate in international organizations unless it acknowledges it is part of China, something Taiwan’s government has refused to do. Italy last week ordered all flights between the country and China to be stopped based on the WHO categorization, including Taiwan’s China Airlines, the only Taiwanese airline to fly between the island and Italy. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said on Sunday they are asking their diplomats around the world in places where Taiwan airlines fly to explain that what the WHO is doing to include the island as part of China is wrong and should not be allowed to affect flights. “Taiwan is Taiwan. Taiwan is not a part of the People’s Republic of China,” he told reporters in Taipei, adding they had totally separate health and airline management systems. “This simple reality the WHO should not get wrong.” No other place aside from China has seen flights restricted and it is not fair to include Taiwan as part of the China restrictions, Wu added.<br/>

Three Philippine airlines on Saturday cancelled flights to China, joining many others around the world that have done the same, after health officials confirmed the Philippines’ first case of coronavirus. A 38-year-old Chinese woman who arrived from Wuhan, China, tested positive for the virus on Thursday. President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday banned the entry of Chinese arriving from Wuhan, at the centre of the epidemic, and provinces with reported cases of the disease. Carriers Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific and the local unit of AirAsia Group Bhd said they were cancelling flights starting this month. “In light of developments related to the novel coronavirus, Cebu Pacific will be cancelling all flights between the Philippines and mainland China from Feb. 2 to March 29, 2020,” the airline said. The country’s largest budget carrier, which flies to Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzen, said it also reduced trips to Hong Kong and Macau. Philippine Airlines said it would cut the number of flights between Manila and Greater China by over 50%. It would continue to serve Filipinos and Chinese nationals returning from the Lunar New Year holidays.<br/>

Pakistan said Monday it is resuming flights to and from China, days after it suspended them due to a rapidly spreading virus outbreak. Pakistan had suspended operations on Friday, a day after the WHO declared the epidemic a global health emergency. “We are resuming flight operations with China, a China Southern Airlines flight with 145 passengers on board will land at 9 am at Islamabad International Airport on Monday,” additional secretary of aviation Abdul Sattar Khokhar told Reuters by text message. <br/>

Airbus bribed public officials and hid the payments as part of a pattern of worldwide corruption, prosecutors said on Friday as the European planemaker agreed a record $4b settlement with France, Britain and the US. The disclosures, made public after a nearly four-year investigation spanning sales to more than a dozen overseas markets, came as courts on both sides of the Atlantic formally approved settlements that lift a legal cloud that has hung over Europe’s largest aerospace group for years. “It was a pervasive and pernicious bribery scheme in various divisions of Airbus SE that went on for a number of years,” US District Judge Thomas Hogan said. The deal, effectively a corporate plea bargain, means Airbus has avoided criminal prosecution that would have risked it being barred from public contracts in the United States and European Union - a massive blow for a major defense and space supplier. Prosecutors said individuals could still face criminal charges, however. Airbus, whose shares closed down 1%, has been investigated by French and British authorities for alleged corruption over jet sales dating back more than a decade. It has also faced US inquiries over suspected violations of US export controls. “In reaching this agreement today, we are helping Airbus to turn the page definitively” on corrupt past practices, French prosecutor Jean-Francois Bohnert said. France’s financial prosecutor said the company had also agreed to three years “light compliance monitoring” by the country’s anti-corruption agency. The US Department of Justice said the deal was the largest ever foreign bribery settlement. Story has more details.<br/>

We’ll get through it,” Boeing’s new CE, Dave Calhoun, told investors this week after the aerospace giant announced its biggest losses in 20 years. The thousands of workers reliant on the company are not so sure. With production of its bestselling plane, the 737 Max jet, on hold after two deadly airline crashes, thousands of workers in Boeing’s US supply chain are have suffered layoffs and loss of hours. The cost to Boeing of the grounding is now estimated at close to $19b. The impact of the grounding is so severe it is holding back the wider economy, according to government figures, and hurting companies and their employees. Spirit, Boeing’s largest parts supplier, employed about 13,000 workers in Wichita prior to the layoffs. The company also laid off about 130 workers at its plant in McAlester, Oklahoma, and several other workers at its Tulsa plant. A spokesperson for Spirit attributed the layoffs to the suspension of 737 Max production and “ongoing uncertainty regarding the timing of when production will resume and the level of production when it does resume”. Laid-off employees will receive severance pay until 10 March, but workers who survived the layoffs are still concerned more job cuts are coming. Other laid-off workers at Spirit also blamed Boeing and criticized the company’s former CE Dennis Muilenburg, who left with a $62m payout when he resigned shortly after the company announced 737 Max production would be suspended. A Boeing spokesperson noted Muilenburg received no severance or 2019 annual bonus, only the benefits he was contractually entitled to receive.<br/>