Airline industry alarm as vaccine-led recovery hopes take a dive

Johan Lundgren wasted no time in dashing off a letter of complaint when a UK government minister recently warned it was too early to even think about booking a summer break. The exasperation from Lundgren, the CE of easyJet, is understandable because the stakes are so high for an airline industry whose hopes for a vaccine-led recovery this year are already in jeopardy. The pandemic shut the skies abruptly last spring, bludgeoning the industry as it endured the largest decline in flying since the second world war. Less than two months into this year, the danger facing airlines is more akin to a slow strangulation as country by country travel restrictions are tightened and, in some cases, borders closed to prevent new variants of Covid-19 spreading. For an $800b industry built on moving people around, it is an alarming picture. Europe and the US have tightened travel restrictions; the UK introduced tougher quarantine rules on Monday while Australia’s borders are expected to stay closed until the end of the year. “Ever changing travel restrictions like quarantines are the single biggest barrier to customer bookings,” Lundgren said. Andrew Charlton, an aviation consultant, puts it bluntly: “The countries that have been really good at suppressing the virus have done it by killing international aviation.” Even as vaccines continue to offer a long-term solution to Covid-19 — and most carriers still believe that this year will ultimately be better than last — signs of the renewed pressures are multiplying. Story has more. <br/>