Asia's airlines ramp up flights, offers as tough COVID travel curbs ease

Asia-Pacific airlines have lost billions of dollars this year, with jets grounded in COVID-19 transportation freezes. Now, as some of the world's strictest pandemic-related travel rules begin to ease, they're ramping up flights and ticket offers. Asian travel agencies and carriers said they're seeing a surge in bookings and travel enquiries as countries like Malaysia and Vietnam allow domestic flights to resume from this week after months of strict lockdowns. India is lifting a domestic capacity cap, while Singapore, Thailand and Fiji are opening without quarantine to vaccinated international travellers from select countries. While airline industry group IATA does not expect a significant improvement in Asia-Pacific international travel until "later in 2022" - predicting cumulative losses of $11.2b this year, narrowing to $2.4b next year - carriers from AirAsia Group to VietJet Aviation, Singapore Airlines, Fiji Airways and Qantas are already increasing capacity. "The most important thing is practically all governments in the Asia-Pacific region with maybe one or two exceptions are abandoning their COVID-zero strategies and moving to a sort of COVID-normal framework," said Association of Asia Pacific Airlines Director General Subhas Menon. "Vaccination rates are also beginning to ramp up." While curbs are easing, a full return to normal operations is a long way off.<br/>