Trading of Boeing’s shares has been halted as the company announces it will suspend production in the Puget Sound region of Washington state for at least 2 weeks. The developments come one day after a Boeing employee at the company’s Everett, Washington 787 site died of coronavirus infection. An employee at the company’s North Charleston, South Carolina 787 site has also tested positive, according to reports. “Boeing announced a temporary suspension of production operations at its Puget Sound-area facilities in light of the state of emergency in Washington state and the company’s continuous assessment of the accelerating spread of the coronavirus in the region,” Boeing says. <br/>
general
Struggling airlines would get US$37b in grants to keep workers on the job as part of a $71b package to rescue airlines and airports under the latest version of a coronavirus stimulus bill being drafted by House speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to a person familiar with the matter. The provisions are in a draft of a $2.5t stimulus bill House Democrats are preparing in a bid to influence ongoing talks on the Senate’s version. The House plan would require airlines that accept federal aid to give labour a seat on their board of directors, offset carbon emissions by 2025 and would fund a program to be run by the DoT to make carrier fleets more fuel efficient by scrapping older planes, according to top Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee who oppose those provisions. <br/>
Airlines have canceled thousands of flights in recent days as the impacts of Covid-19’s rapid march across the US has dramatically reduced travel. As of noon Eastern Time Monday, the 4 major carriers had cut about 5,000 flights from their schedules, or 38% of the total scheduled until then, according to FlightAware. “This is extraordinary,” said John Hansman, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the air-traffic system. “The only thing I can think of close to it was the controller strike under Reagan.” At least 11 air-traffic facilities operated by the FAA have been hit with disruptions as a result of employees testing positive for the virus, according to agency data. <br/>
The collapse in travel that has followed is jeopardising the jobs of 750,000 people directly employed by US airlines A decade of bumper profits hasn’t cushioned the US airline industry from the coronavirus pandemic. Analysts are predicting many face bankruptcy in the coming months unless the govt steps in. Right now, it’s their workers who are feeling the full force of the industry’s crisis – and they are terrified. Major US airlines experienced their 10th consecutive year of profits in 2019 before the coronavirus outbreak hit the US. Labour unions are calling for any bailout to consist of a worker relief program based on payroll continuance so workers can remain in their job and rely on their regular wages, with strings attached to ensure airline companies don’t misuse bailout funds to enrich shareholders and executives. <br/>
Airbus said in a stock market filing Monday that customers could seek to cancel or postpone delivery of airliners and helicopters as the coronavirus crisis continues to escalate. It issued the warning in an annual reference document ahead of its upcoming Amsterdam shareholder meeting, for which it urged participants to vote by proxy rather than attend in person due to widespread measures to slow the spread of the disease. Airbus CE Guillaume Faury said earlier that several airlines had asked to defer deliveries, but that most were continuing to pay their deposits. Airbus also detailed steps to improve compliance practices after paying a US$3.6b fine last month to settle a 4-year multinational bribery probe. But it warned that possible further investigations in other jurisdictions could trigger claims against it by shareholders. <br/>
GE Aviation intends to reduce its US workforce by 10% and to furlough 50% of MRO workers for 90 days in response to collapse of air travel demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Lawrence Culp, CE of parent company GE, announced the cuts Monday. GE Aviation is one of the first major aerospace companies to publicly announce significant lay-offs due to the coronavirus pandemic. GE Aviation did not immediately specify how many staff are affected by the moves or when the workforce reduction will be compete. GE Aviation says it supports a request by the broader aerospace manufacturing industry for billions of dollars in US federal govt aid. A bail-out package is still working its way through the US Congress. <br/>
Airbus believes there are initial signs of air transport recovery from the coronavirus outbreak in China, from where the first contagion wave spread. Its Tianjin facility had briefly shut production when the outbreak emerged, but has since resumed manufacturing, although Chinese airline operations remain significantly affected. CE Guillaume Faury said Monday that the airframer had started to see “some first signs of slow recovery” in domestic air travel. Chinese customers were not able to take delivery of aircraft at the peak of the crisis, he says, but there are “some indications” that deliveries will resume once operationally possible – perhaps “quite soon”, in the next month or so. Faury says the Chinese situation has given him confidence that Airbus will see a return to “high numbers of deliveries” in China later in the year. <br/>
Airports in Europe are lobbying to be added to any bail-out of airlines, forecasting they will suffer a E14b decline in revenue this year because of the rapid spread of coronavirus and the subsequent international travel restrictions. ACI Europe, the airport industry trade body, forecast that European airports would see 700m fewer passengers in 2020, a decrease in footfall of 28% compared with a “business as usual scenario”. The estimate assumes that current flight restrictions will be lifted by the end of April and followed by a gradual recovery in demand for air travel. In a letter sent to the EC Monday afternoon, ACI urged Brussels to introduce “comprehensive, inclusive and non-discriminatory support to the entire aviation ecosystem”. <br/>