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The heads of all passenger airlines flying between Britain and the United States called on Monday for both countries to lift trans-Atlantic travel restrictions put in place to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. High vaccination rates in both countries meant travel could restart safely after more than a year of restrictions, said the CEOs of American Airlines, BA, Delta, United and JetBlue in a rare joint virtual press conference. The push came days ahead of this week’s meetings between US President Joe Biden and British PM Boris Johnson at the G7 meeting of advanced economies this week in Cornwall, southwest England. US and UK airline officials told Reuters they do not expect Washington to lift restrictions until around July 4 at the earliest as the administration aims to get more Americans vaccinated. BA CE Sean Doyle said lifting restrictions is essential. “I think there’s much more at stake here than a holiday, it’s about trade, it’s about visiting friends and relatives, and it’s about getting back and doing business and re-employing people,” Doyle said. Since March 2020, the United States has barred nearly all non-US citizens who have been in the United Kingdom within the previous 14 days from entering the country. Most US travellers visiting the United Kingdom must quarantine for 10 days upon arrival.<br/>

America's largest airlines have lost or damaged at least 15,425 wheelchairs or scooters since they were required to start reporting those numbers to the government at the end of 2018. Those figures represent nearly 1.5% of all such mobility devices loaded as cargo – and would be higher if the pandemic had not kept travellers on the ground for so much of 2020. In 2019, the first full year of reporting, 10,548 wheelchairs or scooters were lost, damaged, delayed or stolen in the US. That amounts to roughly 29 a day. That number plummeted to 3464 in 2020, or about 9.5 a day. In the first quarter of this year, passengers reported that 712 devices, or nearly eight a day, were mishandled. John Morris, founder of the accessible travel site Wheelchair Travel, said his own wheelchair has been damaged frequently during plane trips. He said he believes the numbers reported monthly as part of the Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report do not reflect reality. “Just in my own experience, it approaches 50% of trips,” he said during an interview Friday after getting off a flight. That interview was slightly delayed after he had to file a claim reporting damage to his chair during Friday's flight. The most recent damage was “fairly minor,” Morris said, but has been significant before – from damaged wheels to chairs that were dropped and totalled. Airlines have to repair or replace wheelchairs that they damage. Repairs can take weeks, a month or more.<br/>

PM Justin Trudeau is preparing to ease Canada’s border restrictions for travelers who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the discussions. The government is crafting plans to loosen the current 14-day isolation period for border-crossers who’ve had two vaccine doses, said the people, speaking on condition they not be identified. Travelers entering Canada would still be tested for the virus and may be required to quarantine for a shorter period. The plan is expected be announced within days, though the timing could shift, according to the people. It isn’t clear when the changes would be implemented or whether Canada will open up its borders to non-US travelers at the same time. Pressure has been growing on the Canadian and US governments to relax restrictions that have been in place since March of last year, dramatically reducing land and air traffic between the two countries. A pact that limits non-essential travel is due for renewal on June 21. Stakeholders and government officials say there’s a sense of urgency now, given that it may be the last opportunity to open up the border in time for the summer season. An extension of the measures for another month would be a huge blow for the tourism sector, restricting movement for the July 1 national holiday in Canada and the July 4 weekend in the US. “Businesses need time to plan,” Mark Agnew, a vice president at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said by phone. “Tell us what the road map and the plan and the metrics are.”<br/>

Tourism hotspot Spain's grand reopening to international travel got off to a slow start on Monday, with newly relaxed entry requirements failing to attract the desired wave of foreign visitors amid confusion over the new rules. Hoping to revive its struggling tourist sector Spain began letting in fully-vaccinated people from all over the world on Monday, but only published detailed rules on Saturday, leaving travel operators and tourists in the dark until the last minute. read more International flights to and from Spain were up around 40% compared with a week ago but a spokesperson for airport operator AENA said the increase was in line with a general rise over the past few months. "It is not tremendously significant, it is gradual...they're rising little by little," she said. Madrid's Barajas airport was quiet on Monday morning, especially compared with the hectic flow of tourists before the COVID-19 crisis. Still, Javier Gandara, president of Spain's ALA airlines association welcomed the new regulations, particularly the decision to let travellers in with a negative antigen test, rather than the more expensive PCR test.<br/>

Reopening more international travel routes from the UK will be “challenging” because the country must do everything it can to protect itself from new coronavirus variants, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. Britain last week tightened restrictions on overseas travel, removing Portugal from its so-called green list in a major blow to the airline industry. Restoring travel in the medium-term is an “incredibly important goal,” Hancock told parliament on Monday, but he added: “It’s going to be hard.” The “biggest challenge and the reason this is so difficult is that a variant that undermines the vaccine effort obviously would undermine the return to domestic freedom -- and that has to be protected at all costs,” Hancock said. Ministers will be studying data on infection rates and hospitalizations in the days ahead as they weigh up whether to ease England’s remaining Covid-19 restrictions as planned on June 21. The relaxation has been thrown into doubt by the rise of the highly transmissible delta variant first identified in India. No decisions have yet been made on moving ahead with the final step out of lockdown, Hancock said. An announcement will be made on June 14. Britain is “in a race” between the vaccine program and the virus -- and the delta variant has given the virus “extra legs,” he added.<br/>

Kuwait will operate direct flights with the United Kingdom starting from Sunday, June 13, the government communications office wrote on Twitter citing a decision made by the cabinet. Kuwait will operate one direct flight to London per week for each licensed airline, the decision said.<br/>

African carriers lost $10.2b in passenger revenues last year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and will continue to lose money in 2021, according to a report published by airline association AFRAA. The association estimates that carriers in Africa will lose another $8.35b in passenger revenues this year. While the crisis has had a “devastating impact” on airlines around the world, for African carriers – which were already in a “precarious” financial position – the impact has been “even greater”, says AFRAA. The number of passengers carried by Africa’s airlines is estimated to have dropped 63.7% to 34.7m in 2020, compared with 2019. Domestic flights accounted for 43% of passengers in Africa last year, followed by intercontinental at 38%, and intra-African services at 19%, says AFRAA. Northern Africa was the leading region in terms of passenger numbers last year, accounting for 36.6% of the continent’s traffic. The pandemic led to a 61% reduction in traffic from this region, says AFRAA. In southern Africa, traffic in 2020 fell 63.6%, compared with the previous year. Johannesburg and Cairo were the busiest airports in Africa during 2020, according to the report.<br/>

The Japanese government is considering issuing certificates from this summer to coronavirus vaccine recipients that would be necessary for them to travel overseas, government sources have said. With a growing number of countries checking visitors’ inoculation records as a border control measure, the “vaccine passport” is expected to facilitate business travel, the sources said Monday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato is heading a preparation team comprised foreign and health ministry officials that are looking into the issue. The team is considering specifying in the certificate the date of vaccination and the maker of the shot administered. The vaccine passport will initially be a paper certificate. But in the future it may be a smartphone app, the sources said. If the government decides to issue the certificate, it would then negotiate with other countries on whether Japanese nationals with the certificate would be exempt from quarantine after entry and on how Japan would treat visitors with similar certificates. Referring to concerns in some countries that issuing such a certificate would lead to discrimination against unvaccinated people, Kato said, “We will hold more discussions to respond well to moves overseas.”<br/>

Malaysia’s air traffic is expected to remain at current low levels for at least the next three months, amid countrywide movement restrictions in place until mid-June. “Aviation capacity at the moment is at 25% and a drastic increase is not expected in the next three months,” the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM) said Sunday. Malaysia’s 28 May announcement that the country would be put in total lockdown 1-14 June has spurred operational cuts across the local aviation sector. Malaysia Airlines says in a 4 June statement: “Malaysia Airlines will operate limited service with 85% reduction across its network during [Malaysia’s] Movement Control Order from 1 to 14 June 2021. It will however continue to facilitate essential domestic and international travels as well as cargo movement.” Malaysia Airlines currently puts 58 aircraft into service – 30 Boeing 737-800s, 22 Airbus A330s and six A350s – out of its fleet of 82 aircraft. The operational launch of the new Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Centre in Sepang, Selangor has also been postponed due to the spike in Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 cases, CAAM says in the 6 June statement.<br/>