Travel conditions for Thursday appear dismal as another snowstorm roars across the nation through the end of the week, hitting parts of the country in which millions were already without electricity in record-breaking cold. More than 100m Americans are in the path of the storm as it tracks from the southern Plains to the East Coast over the next few days, the National Weather Service said. But the nation's heartland will get some relief over the weekend, the weather service reported, as the frigid air will begin to moderate over the next couple days. As of 2:30 p.m. EST Thursday, FlightAware counted more than 2,900 canceled flights and more than 1,800 delays. Dallas Fort Worth International still led the world in canceled flights and that airport's dominant carrier, American Airlines, headed up the list of carriers with the most canceled flights. There are approximately 950 cancellations for Friday so far. Austin Bergstrom International Airport reopened Wednesday night, though its south terminal, which serves Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air, remains closed. The airport said it expects to issue an update about Friday operations by this afternoon.<br/>
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Chinese airlines carried just 3.57m passengers across the seven-day Lunar New Year public holiday period, in what the country’s civil aviation regulators have called a “sharp drop” in passenger traffic amid a resurgence in the coronavirus. Data released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) showed that the country’s carriers flew 45% fewer passengers compared to 2020’s Lunar New Year season, when the coronavirus pandemic had just begun. Compared to the similar period in 2019, the decrease in passenger numbers is more stark, at nearly 72%. China’s Lunar New Year holidays — traditionally a peak travel season — spanned 11 to 17 February this year. The CAAC adds that average passenger load factor was around 58%, nearly 6 percentage points higher year on year. Chinese carriers mounted just over 47,000 flights during the seven-day period, about 52% lower than 2020, and a 58% decrease compared to 2019’s Lunar New Year period. Still, the CAAC notes that cargo performed relatively better — the number of international cargo flights more than doubled compared to 2020, to 2,553 flights. <br/>
Britain’s PM Boris Johnson must show how travel will restart when he sets out his wider roadmap for easing COVID-19 restrictions on Feb. 22, UK airline bosses said. “We need a clear statement on the path for international travel in the prime minister’s announcement,” easyJet CE Johan Lundgren said Thursday. “The government has suggested that every other sector which includes hospitality, retail, and leisure, that it will be a roadmap for these sectors out on the Feb. 22, and international travel must be included as well.”<br/>
Canada has fined two passengers for presenting a false or misleading COVID-19 test before boarding a flight to the country, the first time travelers have been hit since the introduction in January of mandatory pre-departure negative tests, the Canadian transport regulator said on Thursday. One of the passengers was fined C$10,000 while the other was fined C$7,000 for falsifying the COVID-19 test when they traveled from Mexico on January 23, Transport Canada said. The travelers also made a false declaration about their health status before boarding a flight to Canada, after having tested positive for novel coronavirus a few days before the flight, the regulator said.<br/>
The aerospace giant Airbus announced a E1.1b loss for 2020 Thursday and warned that the industry might not recover from the disruption caused by the pandemic for two to four years, as new virus variants delay a resumption of worldwide air travel. The world’s largest planemaker eliminated its dividend for a second straight year and predicted a leveling off in deliveries of its popular commercial jets, the company’s CE, Guillaume Faury, said. “As of today we only expect the market to recover between 2023 and 2025,” Faury said. “The pace of recovery will depend not only on the pandemic and the rate of vaccinations, but also on the decision of governments, if they choose to tighten pandemic conditions or, as I hope, restore freedom,” he said. The aircraft manufacturer, based in Toulouse, France, said revenue fell by 29% to E49.9b. Still, the company is outperforming its rival Boeing, which suffered a $11.9b loss in 2020, weighed down by the setbacks from the 737 Max. Airbus delivered 566 aircraft to airlines in 2020, 40% less than expected before the pandemic. In a sign of how badly air travel has been hit, some airlines avoided answering Airbus’s calls to alert them that the new aircraft they had ordered before the pandemic hit was ready, Faury said.<br/>
Brazil has dropped a complaint with the WTO in which it alleged that Bombardier, when developing the jet now called that A220, received unfair subsidies from Canadian governments. Brazil filed the complaint in February 2017 on grounds that the subsidies – which it pegged at more than $3b – harmed Brazilian aerospace manufacturer Embraer. Embraer’s E-Jets compete with A220s. In calling off the dispute, Brazil says recent fundamental changes to the aerospace market – notably changes wrought by Airbus’s acquisition of the A220 programme – have made a desirable ruling uncertain. “Brazil remains convinced of the strength of its case. Nevertheless, it has become clear that the dispute could not effectively remedy the impacts of such large-scale subsidies on the commercial aircraft market,” Brazil’s statement says. “This market is, today, fundamentally different from when Brazil presented its panel request to the WTO.” Brazil had alleged that subsidies received by Bombardier from the Canadian federal government and government of Quebec “distorted the conditions of the competition in the commercial aircraft market and caused serious prejudice to the Brazilian producer Embraer”.<br/>
After almost seven months after the ban on ‘high risk countries’ was put in place, it looks like it is finally about to be lifted. On Thursday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) revealed that it has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Health to allow passengers to travel to Kuwait directly from the 35 banned countries. One of the main points highlighted in the proposal was that all passengers will have to undergo mandatory 14 days’ quarantine in a hotel at their own expense. In addition, passengers will have to bear the cost of two PCR tests, one upon arrival at the airport and another at the end of their quarantine.<br/>