United warns Omicron is threat to transatlantic flights

United Airlines CE Scott Kirby has become the first boss of a big US carrier to warn the Omicron coronavirus variant is a threat to transatlantic travel. “My guess is we’ll have less flying to Europe than we would have in January” because of the new variant, Kirby said as concerns grow that Omicron could disrupt one of the world’s most important airline routes. The company has stopped short of cutting flights to Europe or Africa because of the variant, but Kirby fears passenger numbers will drop on some of its key routes after Omicron’s discovery in South Africa and Botswana last week. However, he is not anticipating the variant will change the overall outlook of the airline, which has bet on a significant expansion in long-haul flights, including five new ones from the US to London from next March, which prompted the carrier’s largest order of new planes. While it’s “too early to know for sure, my guess is that it will have a short-term impact, but the long-term forecast is not any different than it was before”, he said. The airline will continue with new flights to Lagos, which detected its first Omicron cases this week, and the relaunch of flights to Cape Town, where the variant is spreading rapidly, because of passenger demand and the need to fly cargo to those regions. But “we’ll wait and see”, Kirby added. The airline currently operates eight flights per week between the US east coast and Johannesburg and Accra, Ghana, in addition to its Cape Town and Lagos routes.<br/>