The coronavirus epidemic has forced BA and Ryanair to cancel hundreds of flights, as the airlines industry body warned about the impact of a collapse in passenger numbers. BA announced Monday it would cancel more than 200 flights to countries including Italy, Germany and the USA “to match reduced demand due to the continuing coronavirus issue”. Ryanair said it was cutting short-haul flights to Italy by up to 25%, mostly on routes to northern Italy. The cancellations follow similar moves by Lufthansa and easyJet. Coronavirus has already resulted in “serious declines in demand”, according to the IATA. Bookings have fallen and airlines are responding by giving staff unpaid leave, freezing pay and grounding aircraft, it said. One airline reported that bookings for flights to Italy had dropped to zero while refunds were growing. Another cited a 26% reduction across its entire market compared with last year. Some told Iata that 50% of passengers were not showing up to fly on several routes. Given the “extraordinary circumstances” of the outbreak, Iata on Monday asked regulators to suspend rules that mean carriers lose airport landing and take-off slots if they do not use them for 80% of the time. Widespread cancellations would mean airlines stood to lose their slots or be forced to run empty services to keep their allocations, the body said. Alexandre de Juniac, Iata director-general, said “traffic has collapsed on key Asian routes and . . . this is rippling throughout air transport network globally”. He added: “It’s essential that the regulatory community work with us to ensure airlines are able to operate in the most sustainable manner, both economically and environmentally, to alleviate the worst impacts of the crisis.”<br/>
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US officials are pressing airlines to collect and share more data on international travellers with federal health officials combating the coronavirus, two officials said. The matter has been a focal point of discussions between US officials and major airlines ahead of VP Mike Pence's meeting with airline representatives this week, and officials said the issue will likely be a focus of the meeting unless the matter is resolved ahead of time. The data request includes contact information that would help health officials follow up with potential carriers of the coronavirus, or fellow travellers who may have come into contact with an infected person. The request itself is outlined in an interim final rule the US CDC and US Department of Health and Human Services issued in mid-February. It requests airlines provide, within 24 hours of a CDC request, each passenger's name, "address while in the United States," email address and both a primary and secondary phone number. The complication, according to an industry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that many air carriers don't currently collect some of the contact details the CDC is requesting. Bookings made through a third-party search engine, for example, may include very limited information about a passenger.<br/>
US VP Mike Pence said Monday that all airports in South Korea have begun coronavirus screenings on travellers taking direct flights to the US. Pence said the screenings began "three hours ago" and involve multiple temperature checks on the passengers before they board. He spoke during a White House briefing to provide an update on the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak. Italy, another country hit hard by the virus, will also begin screenings "within the next 12 hours," according to Pence. The precautionary measure for South Korea comes after the country reported 4,335 infections and 28 deaths as of Monday. Pence said President Donald Trump authorized the State Department on Saturday to raise the travel advisory for South Korea's hardest-hit city of Daegu to the highest level.<br/>
The White House will hold meetings this week with top executives from US airlines and the cruise industry amid the growing coronavirus outbreak, a spokeswoman for VP Mike Pence said Monday. Pence will attend a meeting on Wednesday with airline officials. Administration and airline officials said those planning to attend include the CE of American Airlines Group, United Airlines Holdings, Southwest and JetBlue Airways. Many of the airline CEOs will speak Thursday at a US Chamber of Commerce Aviation summit in Washington. Airline stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks but rebounded from heavy intraday losses on Monday. American, which closed down 1% on Monday, is off 38% in the last two weeks. United, which closed off 0.5%, is down 25% since Feb. 13.<br/>
US airlines retooled their businesses over the past decade in ways they said would generate profits even during an economic shock. The coronavirus epidemic rippling around the world is providing the biggest test yet of those efforts, grounding hundreds of jets overseas as consumers and businesses scrap travel plans. The most significant operational impact for US carriers has been mass cancellations into April of flights to and from Asia. American Airlines Group and Delta suspended flights to Milan after the U.S. State Department issued its highest-level warning against travel there on Saturday. Delta is also delaying the start of summer flights to Venice by a month. Now there are mounting signs of softening travel demand in the US, as people skip trips and businesses instruct employees to stay put. Pete Erickson, whose company, Modev, organizes events for big tech companies, said some employees had backed away from plans to attend a staff meeting in Washington, D.C., Monday. “They don’t want to get on a plane—domestically,” Erickson said. The company decided not to hold the meeting in-person, and on Sunday told everyone to remain where they were. The financial toll from the epidemic is already expected to far surpass the $7b sales hit to the global airline industry during the SARS outbreak in 2003. Some analysts have estimated $100b in lost revenue to airlines and related industries if traffic growth that was already slowing turns negative for the first time in a decade. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s unprecedented,” said John Grant, an analyst at OAG, which publishes airline schedules and data.<br/>
Big businesses and wealthy people are chartering private jets for “evacuation flights” out of countries hit by the coronavirus outbreak. Adam Twidell, the CE of the private jet booking service PrivateFly, said the company had been inundated with requests from multinational firms arranging the mass evacuation of staff from China and south-east Asia. Twidell said rich families were also chartering private jets to reduce the risk of exposing their families to the virus by avoiding commercial flights and busy airports. “Over the past few weeks, there’s undoubtedly been a rise in demand for short notice on-demand charter relating to the coronavirus Covid-19,” he said. “We’ve had a very significant number of inquiries for group evacuations and from corporates and individuals. Initially, inquiries were focused on evacuations from south-east Asia and other affected areas. But, increasingly, we are now seeing clients looking to take a private flight between a variety of global destinations, to avoid exposure to crowds in [commercial] cabins and airport terminals."<br/>
Boeing’s 737 Max will take four years to reach production levels originally targeted for 2019 even if the grounded jet resumes flying this summer, according to a supplier of parts for its airframe and engine. Senior Plc, which counts Boeing as one of its biggest customers, said Monday that it will likely take until 2023 for the Max to reach a build rate of 57 planes per month, which had initially been planned for last year before two fatal crashes led to the model to be idled worldwide. CEO David Squires said that the projection reflects comments from Boeing and larger suppliers such as Spirit AeroSystems, which said last month that it doesn’t see Max output returning to the previous peak of 52 a month until 2022. “We currently expect all of our 737 Max customers to align around a new build rate and ramp profile over the course of 2020 and 2021 with a steady increase in rates over the next four years,” Squires said.<br/>
Frankfurt airport is operating again after several drone sightings prompted the suspension of all flights for almost two hours. German air navigation service provider DFS suspended all incoming and outgoing flights between about 11.20 a.m. and 1 p.m. after a pilot spotted a drone, a Fraport AG spokesman said. Airlines canceled 77 flights so far, of which 64 flights were diverted to other airports. On Monday, a total of 1,300 services had been scheduled at Frankfurt airport. A spokesman for the federal police said after the initial report, three or four more drone sightings took place and the police searched with a helicopter.<br/>