The airline industry’s chief lobby group widened its estimate for losses this year by about a quarter, saying new Covid-19 flare-ups and mutations have pushed back the timeline for a restart of global air travel. Carriers will lose about $48b in 2021, the IATA said Wednesday. It had earlier forecast a $38b deficit. “This crisis is longer and deeper than anyone could have expected,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s director general. “Losses will be reduced from 2020, but the pain of the crisis increases.” The downward pivot comes as airlines contend with new travel bans and restrictions arising from outbreaks in large aviation markets such as India and Brazil. Governments of countries that have ramped up vaccinations most quickly have become cautious about restarting travel to prevent the import of new variants that could prove resistant to jabs. After the industry lost about $126b in the teeth of the crisis during 2020, there were high hopes for a rebound in air travel during the first half of this year. IATA now says the crucial summer season is at risk. Demand will reach 43% of 2019 levels during 2021 -- a more optimistic outlook than issued in February, but less bullish than in December, when vaccines were first being rolled out. At that time IATA saw traffic this year recovering to about half of pre-pandemic levels. Industry break even, previously expected in Q4, will now be delayed into 2022.<br/>
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The US State Department has added at least 116 countries this week to its “Level Four: Do Not Travel” advisory list, putting the UK, Canada, France, Israel, Mexico, Germany and others on the list, citing a “very high level of COVID-19.” On Monday, the State Department said it would boost the number of countries receiving its highest advisory rating to about 80% of countries worldwide. Before Tuesday, the State Department listed 34 out of about 200 countries as “Do Not Travel.” The State Department now lists 150 countries at Level Four. It declined to say when it would complete the updates. The State Department said on Monday the move did not imply a reassessment of current health situations in some countries, but rather “reflects an adjustment in the State Department’s Travel Advisory system to rely more on (the CDC’s) existing epidemiological assessments.”<br/>
UK and US government officials are in regular talks about a potential travel corridor between the two countries given their mutually high rate of coronavirus vaccinations, according to Britain’s transport secretary. Grant Shapps said he speaks to his US counterpart Pete Buttigieg “all the time” on the issue, and understands demands from the public and businesses to loosen restrictions between the nations. Shapps said Tuesday that a travel ban brought in by former US President Donald Trump more than a year ago would need to be loosened for an agreement to go ahead. “That is the thing that needs to lift in order to open up these different corridors,” the minister said. The UK government is under huge pressure from the airline industry to open up flights again after a year of Covid-19 restrictions that have brought the sector to its knees. PM Boris Johnson has stated an aim to resume some non-essential international travel from May 17, but this will not be decided until early May. Passenger numbers between the UK and US are down 99% this month compared with two years ago, according to American Express Global Business Travel, devastating both trade and tourism revenue.<br/>
Britain's Heathrow Airport has refused to allow extra flights from India before the country is added on Friday to Britain's "red-list" of locations from which most travel is banned due to a high number of COVID-19 cases, the airport said on Wednesday. The move by Britain comes after it detected more than 100 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in India, Health Minister Matt Hancock said on Monday. read more "We've made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the Red List. This means anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they've been in India in the previous 10 days," Hancock had told parliament. Heathrow Airport's refusal to allow extra flights from India was reported earlier by the BBC, with the airport adding that it turned down the requests from airlines because of concerns about queues at passport control. The airport also said it did not want to exacerbate existing pressures at the border by allowing more passengers to fly in.<br/>
Rocketing coronavirus cases are hitting Indian airlines hard, with the much-watched daily average passenger metric one-third off a recent high seen in March. According to India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, 19 April saw 170,000 domestic passengers flying. This is down from the roughly 280,000 who flew on 21 March, and well off the over 400,000 domestic travellers Indian airlines regularly carried on a typical day before the pandemic. FlightGlobal also understands that domestic bookings in India are down 30-40% across all airlines. In a research update, ICICI Securities notes that the average daily domestic passengers fell to just 193,000 for the week ended 17 April, down from 232,000 a week earlier. “Rising Covid cases and increasing lockdown restriction from various states will remain an overhang on air traffic,” it says. India is in the grip of a massive coronavirus resurgence. According to the Johns Hopkins University, the country saw 260,000 cases on 19 April, bringing its seven-day average to 233,000.<br/>
Singapore and Hong Kong called off an announcement planned for Thursday on an air travel bubble between Asia’s two major financial hubs, according to people familiar with the matter, the second time in five months the highly anticipated arrangement appears to have run into obstacles. No reason was immediately provided on why the announcement -- which Bloomberg reported Wednesday was expected as soon as Thursday -- was postponed and a new date has not been set, said the people, who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to speak publicly. The cancellation was initiated by the Singapore side, one of the people said. Singapore’s Ministry of Transport and Hong Kong’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Singapore and Hong Kong have been working on trying to revive their bubble plans after a previously scheduled November start was shelved due to a virus flareup in Hong Kong. The new start date for the bubble was planned for May, people familiar have said, though that’s now uncertain. While it’s unclear what triggered the postponement of the announcement, it comes as Singapore faces new virus cases among its migrant worker community, which underpinned the city’s major outbreak last year.<br/>
On Monday morning), Christina Cassin arrived in Melbourne from Wellington after taking advantage of a newly opened quarantine-free travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand. Her rush to make it to Australia was understandable. Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, she had been unable to visit her daughter or see her baby grandson, who was born five months ago. The opening of the travel bubble - the first for both countries - has led to tearful reunions and the excited resumption of overseas holidays. Initial flights between the country were close to capacity, as airlines hired extra workers and operated additional flights to accommodate the demand. On Monday alone, almost 10,000 people travelled between the two neighbours. The excitement quickly raised hopes in Australia's hard-hit travel sector about the possibility of opening to other destinations, particularly Singapore. Australia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport, Michael McCormack, said this week that Singapore was top of the list for a potential next bubble.<br/>
The government has agreed to extend excise tax reductions for jet fuel until the end of the year, a move to help mitigate the plight of airlines hard hit by Covid-19 outbreaks which have almost wiped out cross-border travel and tourism. Lavaron Sangsnit, director-general of the Excise Department, said yesterday the department -- with the cabinet's consent -- has announced an extension of the reduction of such tax until Dec 31 once the extension period is scheduled to end later this month. The cabinet approved lowering the excise tax on jet fuel to 20 satang per litre from 4.726 baht in February last year as part of urgent aid measures for domestic airline operators during the pandemic. The reduction expired on Sept 30 last year, but it was later allowed to be extended until April 30 this year as the impact of the pandemic on the airline industry persisted.<br/>
While much of the world contends with a surge in Covid-19 cases, Australia takes another big step toward normality this weekend when about 100,000 football fans will gather in the nation’s largest sports stadium, without having to wear masks. The government has tamed the virus by shuttering the international border and through rigorous testing and contact tracing, giving Australians an enviable level of freedom. But after winning the containment battle, the country now risks losing the vaccination war as supply shortages and a slow rollout jeopardize the economic recovery. International tourism and higher education have little chance of recovering until the borders reopen -- and that won’t happen until most of the population has been vaccinated. With only 1.7m shots delivered so far in a nation of almost 26 million, Australia is ranked 93rd on Bloomberg’s Global Vaccine Tracker. The timeline for vaccinating all Australians by October has slipped, potentially into early next year, when PM Scott Morrison’s government will seek re-election. “Some voters will feel the shine of managing the pandemic wear off if they see Australia trailing all these other countries in their vaccination rollouts,” said Jill Sheppard, a political analyst at the Australian National University in Canberra. “That could particularly hit Morrison around election time if they feel poor decision-making by the government is affecting their hip pocket.”<br/>