US air travel falls for first week since April as coronavirus cases spike

Air travel demand is easing as coronavirus cases spike in the southern US, according to data released Monday, souring airlines’ hopes of a summer rebound that would help generate cash to weather the pandemic. In the week ended July 19, 4.65m people passed through checkpoints at US airports, according to the TSA, down more than 4% from a week earlier and the first weekly percentage drop since April. Air travel is up sharply from more than five-decade lows hit in April, but airlines are facing softening demand amid new cases, quarantine orders for arriving travellers in New York and elsewhere, and delays in reopening some states to stop the highly contagious virus from spreading. The peak summer season is always crucial to airline revenue but it is even more important this year with a grim outlook for corporate travel this fall because of the pandemic. Delta last week said it would halve the number of additional flights planned for next month to 500 a day and CEO Ed Bastian warned that some business travel might never return after the pandemic. “Demand has stalled as the virus has grown, particularly down here in the South, across the Sun Belt, coupled with the quarantine measures that are going in place in many of the Northern states,” Bastian said last Tuesday. “Those two factors are causing consumers to pause.”<br/>