Air travel in the US is hitting new pandemic-era highs, and airlines are scrambling to keep up with the summer vacation crowds. Despite rising numbers of coronavirus infections fueled by the delta variant, the US set another recent high mark for air travel on Sunday, with more than 2.2m people going through airport checkpoints, according to the TSA. That is nearly 11,000 more people screened than Jul 18, and the highest number since Feb 28, 2020, before the US felt the full brunt of the pandemic. However, air travel was still down 17% on Sunday from the same Sunday in 2019. The resurgence of leisure travel, coupled with some bad weather, has led to delays and flight cancellations at airlines struggling to ramp up after being crushed by the pandemic. Airlines have thousands fewer workers than they did before the pandemic, and at times they have been caught short-staffed even though they received US$54b in taxpayer money to keep employees on the payroll. By mid-afternoon on Monday, Spirit Airlines cancelled about 290 flights - more than one-third of its schedule - citing weather and “operational challenges.” American Airlines cancelled 500 flights, or 16% of Monday's schedule by late afternoon. With other planes mostly full this summer, airlines are struggling to rebook passengers on cancelled flights.<br/>
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Air traffic in European airspace exceeded Eurocontrol’s “optimistic” scenario in July, as flight numbers reached 65% of 2019 levels. The European air traffic manager had, on 1 June, cited 64% as the likely outcome if countries relaxed travel restrictions sooner than expected amid successful vaccination programmes, with its baseline forecast being 52% and its worst-case scenario being 46%. “Just exceeded our best-case scenario,” says Eurocontrol director general Eamonn Brennan on Twitter, adding that data is “looking good” for August too. To exceed the “optimistic” scenario in August, flights would need to be above 69% of 2019 levels, based on the June forecast. Already traffic for the week ending 1 August was nearing that point, Eurocontrol data shows, hitting 68.3% of 2019 levels at 23,899 flights per day. Ryanair was by far the busiest airline in terms of flight numbers during that week, averaging 2,175 per day. That was more than double the numbers achieved by any other carrier, aside from Turkish Airlines at 1,301. EasyJet was next at 1,074, followed by Air France (896), Lufthansa mainline (824), KLM (726) and Wizz Air (617). Number of flights is just one measure of air traffic and tends to be more immediately available than other key metrics such as passenger numbers, load factors, available seat kilometres and revenue passenger kilometres.<br/>
The French government redoubled its efforts to get the UK to reverse Covid-19 restrictions on visitors from France, ahead of a British reassessment of those rules later this week. French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said the UK’s policy announced last month requiring travelers from France to isolate for up to 10 days and take two tests is based on questionable science. The requirement was dropped for most European countries starting this week. While Djebbari urged the government to reverse course quickly, UK PM Boris Johnson refrained from offering much hope. “What I want to see is something as simple and as user-friendly for people as possible,” Johnson said Monday when asked about the likelihood of changes to UK rules this week. The dispute comes as relations between the UK and the EU remain difficult. Last month, the UK demanded a renegotiation to the Brexit deal governing Northern Ireland -- something the bloc has refused. Conflicts have also cropped up with France over how to deal with migrants and fishing rights. “I hope this week during their weekly review there will be a positive change,” Djebbari told CNews TV station on Monday, in a reference to a possible assessment of UK rules on Thursday. He said he’s been talking with his UK counterpart Grant Shapps every week.<br/>
It has been a stream of bad news for Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye over the past 18 months. The airport has lost nearly GBP3b since the pandemic began and terminals have been mothballed, while Holland-Kaye has been engaged in frantic government lobbying to reopen UK borders. But in the past few weeks, the black clouds hanging over aviation seem to be lifting to reveal at least chinks of blue sky, prompting Holland-Kaye to call a meeting of airlines and ground handlers with a new message: Make sure you are ready for flying to rebound in the coming months. “I think we have come out of the phase where we just batten down the hatches,” he said. This cautious optimism is slowly spreading across large parts of the ravaged airline industry, which has suffered its worst-ever crisis as one of the hardest-hit sectors in the pandemic, with executives betting vaccines and loosening travel restrictions have cleared the path to recovery. Confidence is growing fastest in the US with carriers starting to report profits thanks to a buoyant domestic market, while in Europe the new upbeat mood has prompted the region’s airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair to plan a ramp-up in their flying schedules during the late summer. “We are in the midst of an unprecedented recovery,” Doug Parker, CE of American Airlines, told analysts on the latest quarterly earnings call. Willie Walsh, former head of British Airways owner International Airlines Group who runs global airline trade body IATA, said: “The recovery has definitely started in the second half, there are signs of things improving, restrictions being relaxed or removed, and we have to take positives from that.” It is a sharp change in fortunes for an industry that has been battered by the pandemic with global airlines losing a combined $125b in 2020 and forecast by IATA to lose another $48b this year.<br/>
Hong Kong will allow vaccinated tourists from all but 10 places in the world to enter the city starting on Aug. 9, a significant easing of some of the tightest border curbs in the world. Vaccinated visitors from countries now considered “medium-risk” -- which includes the US and Canada -- will be able to enter the city for the first time since the pandemic started. Meanwhile, Hong Kong residents from previously banned places like the UK and India can now return home. Visitors and residents from medium-risk countries must spend seven days in hotel quarantine after they arrive. They will also be required to have a positive antibody test from a laboratory recognized by the Hong Kong government to prove they were vaccinated against Covid-19. Antibody testing facilities at the airport will be available starting in mid-August, according to a government statement. The easing, first announced by CE Carrie Lam on Monday without detail, also allows children who aren’t eligible for vaccination to leave hotel quarantine with their inoculated parents after seven days -- though they must then self-isolate at home for another two weeks. The revived plan, first proposed in June, comes as Hong Kong tries to reopen its economy after nearly two months without local transmission, while keeping out the highly contagious delta strain that’s driving new outbreaks around the world.<br/>