When an airline no longer wants a plane, it is sent away to a boneyard. From the air, the planes look like the bleached remains of some long-forgotten skeleton. Europe’s biggest boneyard is built on the site of a late-30s airfield in Teruel, in eastern Spain, where the dry climate is kind to metallic airframes. Many planes are here for short-term storage, biding their time while they change owners or undergo maintenance. If their future is less clear, they enter long-term storage. Sometimes a plane’s limbo ends when it is taken apart, its body rendered efficiently down into spare parts and recycled metal. In February, Patrick Lecer, the CEO of Tarmac Aerosave, the company that owns the Teruel boneyard and three others in France, had one eye cocked towards China. Lecer has been in aviation long enough to remember flights being grounded during the Sars epidemic in 2003. This year, when the coronavirus spread beyond Asia, he knew what was coming. “We started making space in our sites, playing Tetris with the aircraft to free up two or three or four more spaces in each,” he told me. By late March, after the US shut its skies to Europe, planes began streaming into Tarmac Aerosave’s boneyards. No one knew if they were going into short-term residency or long-term storage. On one day alone, 3 April, the Teruel boneyard received five Boeing 747s and two Boeing 777s. Throughout the next few weeks, planes arrived from Lufthansa, Air France, Etihad and British Airways. Before the pandemic, there were 78 aircraft at Teruel. By June, there were 114, running near the full capacity of 120-130. Patrick Lecer’s other three boneyards were also “close to saturation”, he told me in July. He sounded grave. He had just spent two hours on the phone with an airline that wanted him to house another 30 planes. “I’ve been in this business almost 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. The mood is bad. It feels like a tragedy.” Among all the industries hit by Covid-19, aviation suffered in two distinct ways. Most obviously, there was the fear of contagion. No other business depends on putting you into knee-by-thigh proximity with strangers for hours, while whisking potentially diseased humans from one continent to another. Less directly, there was the tumbling economy. It is an axiom in aviation that air travel correlates to GDP. Story is a long and detailed read about the trajectory facing the industry.<br/>
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The worries are growing for United Airlines flight attendant Jordy Comeaux. In a few days, he’ll be among roughly 40,000 airline workers whose jobs are likely to evaporate in an industry decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. Unless Congress acts to help for a second time, United will furlough Comeaux on Thursday, cutting off his income and health insurance. Unemployment and the money made by his husband, a home health nurse, won’t be enough to pay the bills including rent near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. “I don’t have enough, unfortunately, to get by,” said Comeaux, 31, who has worked for United for four years. “No one knows what’s going to come next and how to prepare.” Since the pandemic hit, thousands of flight attendants, baggage handlers, gate agents and others have been getting at least partial pay through $25b in grants and loans to the nation’s airlines. To receive the aid, companies agreed not to lay off employees through Sept. 30. That “Payroll Support Program” helped many stay on, and keep health care and other benefits. It all runs out on Thursday. With air travel down about 70% from last year, many carriers say they’ll be forced to cut jobs without additional aid. Industry analysts say fear of air travel and businesses keeping employees close to home have brought an unprecedented crisis to the industry, resulting in cataclysmic losses. The four largest US airlines — Delta, United, American and Southwest — together lost $10b in Q2 alone. “To my understanding, this is the steepest demand shock for commercial aviation in human history,” said Morningstar aviation analyst Burkett Huey. The IATA on Tuesday lowered its full-year traffic forecast. The trade group for airlines around the world now expects 2020 air travel to fall 66% from 2019, compared to its previous estimate of a 63% decline.<br/>
Global airlines reduced their 2020 traffic forecast on Tuesday, after a small summer rebound evaporated amid renewed coronavirus outbreaks and travel restrictions.<br/>Full-year passenger traffic is set to decline 66%, the IATA said, compared with a previously forecast 63% decline. “The improvement that we saw in the summer months has more or less stopped,” IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said. August traffic was down 75.3% in terms that reflect passenger numbers as well as distance flown, compared with a 79.5% drop in July. Airlines are pressing governments to abandon quarantines and other travel curbs blamed for worsening the slump, and instead roll-out rapid COVID-19 testing at airports. Load factors that measure the proportion of aircraft seats filled fell 27.2 points to a record low of 58.5% in August. “The industry is restarting but it looks as though it’s still burning through cash,” Pearce said. Losses will continue to mount throughout 2020, with bookings data pointing to a weak Q4. August’s short-lived improvement was driven by domestic routes, down more most 50% year-on-year, while international traffic was 88% lower. A rebound in Russia’s domestic market, up 3% on last year, contrasts with Australian flights still down 88% and Chinese internal traffic still 19% lower year-on-year, IATA said. Cargo demand was down 12.6% in August, an improvement on July’s 14.4% decline, it also said. The grounding of passenger jets has reduced capacity, supporting prices.<br/>
The world’s harried airline bosses will look enviously at China this week as millions of people take to the skies for national holidays, helping Chinese carriers push even further ahead in recovering from the pandemic. The holiday starts with the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day on Thursday and runs to Oct. 8. The so-called Golden Week is typically a time for families to reunite and will add momentum to a domestic rebound that’s lifting air travel within China back toward usual levels. More than 15 million people are due to fly over the period, a 10% increase from last year, according to Lan Xiang, head of the research division at online travel agent Qunar. Airlines elsewhere are mired in crisis as they struggle to rebuild networks and coax virus-wary passengers back onboard. Even with international routes largely off limits, Chinese carriers are better set thanks to their vast home market and success in bringing the virus under control. China’s airlines haven’t evaded the crisis altogether: the three biggest posted combined losses of almost $4b in the first half and the recovery won’t be enough to put them into the black by year-end. Their worst month was February, shortly after the outbreak began in Wuhan on the cusp of Chinese New Year, another major holiday. But just two months later, they were already sounding confident about overcoming the slump and luring passengers back with deals and unlimited flight offers. People now feel “very safe” flying within China and demand has picked up strongly, Trip.com Group CEO Jane Sun said last week. Even business travel will rebound, she said, dismissing concerns that work trips are a thing of the past now that people have become more accustomed to virtual meetings.<br/>
China’s air passenger volume could jump by 10% year-over-year during a critical holiday season that begins later this week — but that won’t help Chinese airlines turn profitable until international travel resumes, said an analyst. Chinese airlines, like their peers globally, have been hit by a slump in travel as countries around the world closed borders and limit movements of people to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Domestic travel in China has rebounded strongly as the country recovers from the pandemic, but Chinese airlines will continue to feel the pain, said Ivan Su, equity analyst at Morningstar. “Without this international demand, it’s unlikely according to our analysis that Chinese airlines would be able to go back into profit territory,” Su said Tuesday. “The overall theme for Chinese carriers is to curb losses during this period instead of making profits,” he said. “Until we see major a pickup in yield, we don’t really think Chinese airlines will be able to generate much profits off domestic routes for long.” Su added that he did not expect international passenger volumes into China — which has been down about 95% now from a year ago — to pick up strongly this year. However, the Chinese have become keen travelers within their own country as international borders remain largely shut. In August, domestic air passenger volumes in China were 20% lower from a year ago. In the later weeks of September, they were higher as compared to a year ago, said Su. “Heading into the Golden Week, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a 10% increase year over year in domestic passenger volume,” said Su, referring to week-long Mid-Autumn Festival public holiday starting on Thursday in China. Many Chinese airlines will struggle to generate profits this year partly due to unlimited flight passes that they have launched, said Su. Unlimited flight passes are prepaid tickets that are purchased for a flat fee that allow any number of trips within a specified time period.<br/>
The US Treasury said on Tuesday it had closed loans to seven large airlines hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and urged Congress to save tens of thousands of airline jobs by extending billions in payroll assistance. The Treasury said the seven carriers were Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways Corp, Hawaiian Airlines, SkyWest Airlines and United Airlines. Airlines and unions were still heavily lobbying Congress ahead of a Wednesday deadline for a new US$25b bailout to keep workers on the payroll for another six months, but industry officials acknowledge they face an uphill battle with just hours left. US airlines received US$25b in March under the Cares Act, primarily in the form of grants to keep employees on payroll through September and avoid furloughs. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress on Tuesday to extend the payroll assistance programme "so we can continue to support aviation industry workers as our economy reopens and we continue on the path to recovery." Last week, Mr Mnuchin ruled out executive action to avert airline layoffs. House of Representatives Democrats have backed a US$2.2t measure that would provide assistance to many hard-hit sectors as well as direct relief for Americans. They have been reluctant to support a stand-alone measure that would only aid airline workers. Nick Calio, who heads the airline trade group Airlines for America, said Tuesday that carriers "remain hopeful that Congress will act quickly to save these jobs before the Sept 30 deadline - which is tomorrow - but time is running out."<br/>
UK airlines are not proactively spacing out passengers on board flights even when there are free seats available for them to do so according to Which?. Based on its research into airline load factors (number of occupied seats), the consumer champion found that “several airlines regularly had free seats available to leave a gap between social bubbles of passengers but weren’t doing so”. British Airways had a load factor of just 27.6% in the three months leading up to June this year, which means there’s plenty of room to distance on flights. While it doesn’t proactively distance groups of passengers during seat allocation, it does allow them to pre-select their seats for free 24 hours before departure, which means they are more likely to be seated next to people they’re travelling with. But such distancing is more difficult on airlines where passengers must pay in order to choose their seats. According to Which?, Wizz Air had an average load factor of 55.5% in the three months leading up to June this year, which meant that around every third seat would be empty. But the airline’s random allocation seating policy wasn’t modified during the pandemic, which meant passengers were often seated in clusters and split up from those in their group unless they had paid extra to sit together. Story has more.<br/>
The Government is pressing ahead with plans to increase Air Passenger Duty (APD) despite pleas from the beleaguered travel industry to temporarily scrap the tax. APD already adds as much as GBP176 to the cost of an airfare and airlines and tour operators had called for it to be suspended for a year to help them survive the Covid crisis. Instead, the Government has confirmed that the tax will rise in April 2021 to a maximum of GBP180 per person. This is the highest rate, which applies to longer flights (where the distance from London to the destination country’s capital city is over 2,000 miles) for premium economy, business-class and first-class passengers. The reduced rate – which applies to economy-class airfares – will rise from GBP80 to GBP82 for longer flights. The short-haul rate will remain GBP26 per person (or GBP13 for passengers in economy class). Abta, the travel association, Airlines UK, which represents carriers including British Airways, EasyJet and Ryanair, as well as the Airport Operators Association, have all urged the Government to suspend APD in recent weeks to provide a timely boost for an industry left on the brink by global travel restrictions. <br/>
Flightradar24.com, the popular flight-tracking website, is experiencing “sustained attacks” on its system and remains unavailable for users as engineers try to fix the issue. “Attacks on our systems continue and while we were able to bring services back for a short time, significant instability due to the sustained attacks has forced us to refocus our efforts to mitigate them,” the website said. “Flightradar24 remains unavailable to all users at this time.” No further information was available. Flightradar24 doesn’t have an estimate on when its services will resume as the attacks are preventing it from successfully serving legitimate traffic, a spokesman said in an emailed response to queries.<br/>