Airlines warn worsening US virus spread threatens revival

High coronavirus infection rates in the US are threatening to undermine a global recovery in travel, according to the airline industry’s main trade group. IATA economists said Wednesday their baseline estimate for a 36% drop in traffic this year could worsen to 53% if border curbs on emerging market countries and the US remain in place. The EU this week relaxed a ban on non-essential travel from 15 countries beyond the bloc, including Australia, Canada and Japan, while maintaining a bar against visits by Americans. The decree suggests disruption to a US-EU air-travel market generating $29b a year in revenue will continue until authorities rein in the deadly disease. “There’s a compromise to find between the need to reopen and restart the economy, and the need for an approach to limit the transmission of the virus from one country to another,” IATA CEO Alexandre de Juniac said. Brian Pearce, the group’s chief economist, said a sustained slump in trans-Atlantic travel would hurt European network airlines most, since they don’t have a profitable short-haul market to fall back on, unlike their US peers. Pearce said a global recovery in flights had already dipped in the second half of June amid a resurgence of the outbreak in China, where domestic demand had been recovering.<br/>