The world’s top airlines have lost a whopping $110b in revenue so far this year, including IAG, Air France and American Airlines, due to travel restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, financial educational firm StockApps said. “Massive cancellations of flights to control the spread of the virus led to huge drops in airline passenger revenues and caused staggering losses to the world's largest airline companies,” the firm said. IAG witnessed a $14.9b revenue loss between January and September. The financial report of the airline holding company showed passenger capacity in Q3 plunged 78.6% year-on-year, and 64.3% for the period of nine months. Lufthansa reported a $10.6b revenue loss in the first half of 2020. After laying off 8,300 employees between January and March, its H1 2020 financial statement confirmed that 22,000 more are to follow. Air France suffered a $20.4b year-to-date revenue loss. July and August were relatively strong in terms of traffic compared to a disappointing September affected by restrictive travel measures. Statistics indicate the combined revenues of the three largest European airlines crashed by $45.9b since the beginning of the year. US airlines were hit even worse. Story has detail.<br/>
general
Airlines have begun slashing capacity on UK routes as the country prepares to enter a second coronavirus lockdown that will outlaw all non-business trips. Though it’s still unclear how the English ban will be enforced, carriers will cut seating by 70% in coming days, based on scheduling estimates from travel-data provider. EasyJet is scrapping all but a handful of trips to locations including the Spanish island of Tenerife, Portugal’s Algarve, and cities such as Amsterdam, according to its website. Private-jet operators, by contrast, are seeing a jump in last-minute bookings from wealthy families desperate to beat the lockdown, with charter specialist Air Partner reporting a “sharp surge” in interest from people based in the UK but with second homes in the Canary Islands. The region’s air-traffic manager Eurocontrol meanwhile warned that passenger numbers won’t fully recover for many years without an effective Covid-19 vaccine. Without an effective vaccine, Eurocontrol estimates it may take 10 years to recover to last year's levels “The impact of this sudden lockdown will ripple through consumer confidence for the rest of the winter season,” John Grant, a senior analyst at OAG, said Wednesday. “Unless there is finally some intervention from the U.K. government then the future will remain bleak for probably most of 2021, based on the damage that will be done in the next four weeks.” Britain will impose the travel ban from midnight tonight until Dec. 2 as part of a wider lockdown aimed at stemming a resurgence of Covid-19. Some airlines will cease all flights, while others, like Dubai-based Emirates and American Airlines Group , will likely continue flying less frequently to their hub airports, Grant said. The IATA said in a webinar Wednesday that the UK restrictions will be “extremely damaging” for the country’s travel industry. Bookings shot up 112% when quarantine requirements for people returning from the Canary Islands were lifted, but the lockdown will slam the brakes on any recovery, according to the trade group. “Health is a priority but we need to be looking at ways of preserving jobs,” IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said in the briefing. “A by-product of these measures is going to be that jobs will be lost in the travel and tourism sector.”<br/>
More than 1,000 jobs are at risk at Heathrow in a catering company serving Covid-stricken airlines such as British Airways, according to union representatives. Do & Co is making 1,068 staff redundant, the Unite union said, in the latest employment blow for the aviation sector. The company will be left with about 500 staff at Heathrow. The pandemic has caused dramatic losses and job cuts across the global airline industry and in the supply chain that serves it. Airlines such as BA have already made thousands of job cuts in the UK, and in September the boss of Heathrow warned that local areas could become like “a mining town in the 1980s” because of the extent of job losses. Do & Co reported that its global revenues fell by 87% between April and June because of the pandemic. Unite said the company had refused to put its workers on the government’s newly extended coronavirus job retention scheme, unlike other airline caterers at Heathrow such as dnata and Gate Gourmet. The job retention scheme will support 80% of the wages of furloughed workers from Thursday, when the new England-wide lockdown begins. The first of the workers received their redundancy notices on Friday, meaning hundreds could have their jobs made redundant before Christmas.<br/>
Zoom may have been one of the buzzwords of 2020, but more and more New Zealand businesses are returning to a different kind of zooming: flying. Research from travel management company FCM Travel Solutions - which is part of the Flight Centre Travel Group - shows a staggering 56 percent of New Zealand businesses have employees and executives flying as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on internationally. That puts Aotearoa's rate 6% above the global average. Nick Queale, General Manager Flight Centre Corporate says FCM bookings show that after the first period of national lockdown and compared to the same time last year, travel bookings returned to 11% within one week, and 24% within five weeks. "Following the country's recent return back down to Alert Level 1, we've seen travel bookings return to 37 percent in one week, and 44 percent within five weeks. Kiwis have become less wary of travel, they're adapting to a new way of living, taking precautions and getting on with the job," Queale said. Corporate travel is a major player in the recovery of airlines in Aotearoa, with domestic airline capacity returning among the fastest worldwide at 80 percent of pre-COVID levels, joined by China and Vietnam. New Zealand is faring much better than across the ditch, with Australia operating at only 21 percent airline capacity due to interstate restrictions. <br/>