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Airline executives warned Thursday that bookings are starting to drop as new coronavirus cases hit records and government health officials advise against travel over Thanksgiving. “Certainly with the increase in infection rates really throughout the country we’ve seen a dampening of demand,” American Airlines President Robert Isom said Thursday. “It’s really too soon to tell how deep and how long there may be a depressed environment but we’ve seen some weakening of bookings.” Isom’s comments came after the CDC advised the public to avoid travel over Thanksgiving, typically a busy weekend for airlines when travelers are willing to pay high prices to visit relatives. The US reported more than 170,100 new cases of the virus on Wednesday, the second-highest one-day spike reported to date, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager, on Thursday said the agency is concerned that the virus could spread at the country’s “transportation hubs,” because people might not be able to maintain physical distancing. However, he acknowledged that the CDC’s “strong recommendation” isn’t a requirement and that some might choose to ignore the agency’s advice. Earlier Thursday, United said bookings slowed and cancellations rose in the week ended Wednesday, echoing comments last week from Southwest about softening demand. “We are providing people safety in their journey and informed science and data so they can make a decision should they want to travel,” Nicholas Calio, CEO of Airlines for America, said Thursday. “We’re not encouraging people to travel. Do we want to see them travel? Yes, we do, but only if it’s safe to them and there are a variety of factors involved in that for each individual traveler.”<br/>

Confidence about the course of the coronavirus pandemic has helped put passengers back on planes in recent months, and Thanksgiving week is shaping up to be one of the busiest periods for US air travel since it came to a near-standstill in the spring. News that effective vaccines may be close at hand lifted airline stocks. But new concerns over the spread of the virus are rattling travelers and threatening airlines’ hopes for the months ahead. “There’s two trains running toward us,” said John Grant, a senior analyst with OAG, an aviation data firm based near London. “One is full of optimism on a vaccine, and the other is, sadly, full of more caution. Who gets there first?” Airlines argue that flying is generally safe because of the various policies put in place to limit contagion, high-end air filtration aboard planes and the relatively few published cases of coronavirus spread in flight. But the science is far from settled, travelers are still at risk throughout their journey and many would-be passengers have been discouraged by lockdowns and outbreaks in the places they hoped to visit. Passenger volumes remain down more than 60% from last year, and the industry is losing the tens of millions of dollars a day. Story has more.<br/>

Faced with a seemingly unstoppable surge in coronavirus infections, officials at the CDC on Thursday urged Americans to avoid travel for Thanksgiving and to celebrate only with members of their immediate households — a message sharply at odds with a White House eager to downplay the threat. The plea, delivered at the first CDC news briefing in months, arrived as many Americans were packing their bags for one of the most heavily traveled weeks of the year. It is the first time that the agency has warned people away from traditional holiday celebrations. “The safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving this year is at home with members of your household,” said Erin Sauber-Schatz, who leads the agency’s community intervention and critical population task force. She urged Americans to reassess plans for the coming week. The warning runs counter to messages from administration officials, who have denounced concerns that Thanksgiving celebrations will speed the virus’s spread. “A lot of the guidelines you’re seeing are Orwellian,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said on “Fox & Friends,” singling out a requirement in Oregon that gatherings not exceed more than six people. Members of the White House coronavirus task force did not even mention Thanksgiving at a news conference on Thursday, even as they warned of the hazards associated with indoor gatherings and urged “vigilance” in the face of rampant infections.<br/>

A day after Boeing received approval for its 737 MAX to fly again following a 20-month grounding, its two largest US and European customers signaled caution on their order books as they monitor demand in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. US based Southwest, Boeing's largest customer worldwide, said this week it would just take new MAX jets to replace jets it's retiring rather than grow its fleet, and on Thursday raised the prospect of scaling back its fleet due to the pandemic. “If demand is going to be persistently depressed, we can retire and not need to take airplanes as replacements,” Southwest CE Gary Kelly told journalists. When the 737 MAX was grounded globally in March 2019 following two fatal crashes, airlines canceled flights because they lacked enough airplanes to meet strong travel demand. Now many have parked jets or even gone out of business in the pandemic, creating challenges for Boeing as it tries to find homes for 737 MAX jets that are built but now lack buyers. A senior executive of Boeing's largest European customer, low-cost carrier Ryanair, said on Thursday that it is not currently looking at additional orders for the jet, but may buy more if prices fall in the wake of COVID-19.<br/>

Fatal flaws in the Boeing 737 Max have been addressed and the plane is now safe to fly, U.S. aviation regulators contend. Yet for many airline travelers, a central question remains: Do I feel safe flying in a plane that crashed twice, killing 346 people? “There’s no way I’m flying it, period,” said Jon Bonne, a New York-based food and wine writer. “No one in commercial aviation scraps a bad airplane and just starts over. So we’re stuck with the Max.” The Max’s catastrophic failures were attributed to Boeing’s shortcomings and U.S. regulators’ deference to the industry they govern. “That’s what caused the Max to get off the factory line with a whole lot of problems,” said Jerry Elmas, a sales executive in Austin, Texas, who plans to “wait a couple of years” before flying on a Max, even if it means adding a connection to one of his trips. “I’m a business person,” he said. “If I kill my customers, they don’t come back. It’s the oddest thing.” Others noted that the Max is now among the most analyzed aircraft in history, given the aftermath of the late 2018 crash off Indonesia and the second disaster a few months later in Ethiopia. Having grounded the plane in March 2019, the FAA lifted its order on Wednesday.<br/>

Global regulators have held off approving the Boeing 737 MAX despite a decision by the US FAA to end a 20-month grounding, highlighting changes in the global regulatory pecking order caused by two crashes of the jet. In March 2019, when the second MAX crash in five months brought the death toll on the recently introduced Boeing Co model to 346 people, China quickly grounded the airliner, sparking a cascade of flight bans around the world. The announcements from East to West highlighted China’s growing clout in aerospace and global affairs. Now, however, the ungrounding process is expected to take days, weeks or longer as foreign regulators check the FAA’s homework and impose their own conditions for a return to service. In the past, regulators promptly followed the guidance of the FAA, credited for decades with pioneering aviation safety. But many are now wary of seeming to toe the FAA line after the US agency was faulted for lax oversight. Canada and Brazil, two aircraft-producing nations with heft in the industry, are expected to back the FAA’s decision within weeks. But both said on Wednesday they weren’t yet ready to decide. “I think it’s causing the countries to be a little bit more critical of the type-certificate validation process,” said Mike Daniel, a former FAA certification expert and accident investigator based in Singapore. “Hopefully they’re a little bit more critical of what their air operators are required to do with regard to training.”<br/>

Despite a forecast drop in passenger travel of around 50% this year, Russia’s federal aviation agency said on Thursday it does not expect airport or airline bankruptcies, with the industry ravaged by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Russia grounded flights abroad in March to curb the spread of coronavirus and only began reopening some routes in August, but has gradually added more destinations to the list. During a lockdown period in the spring, some airlines saw traffic fall as much as 90%. “We currently do not expect bankruptcy of airports or airlines, although the financial situation is quite difficult,” said Rosaviatsiya’s deputy head Alexei Novgorodov. As the industry watchdog, Rosaviatsiya monitors airlines’ financial state and may have additional information on the likelihood of the industry receiving state support packages. The government distributed 23.4b roubles of state funds to airlines suffering losses back in May. Novgorodov said Russian airlines would miss out on around half the number of passengers in 2020, compared with a year previously. Preliminary Rosaviatsiya data showed passenger traffic fell by 46.1% to 59.44 million people from January to October.<br/>

Russian authorities are preparing to introduce a new airspace structure in the Moscow flight information region, as well as the regions to the north of the capital. The new structure will take effect from 3 December and is intended to improve flight efficiency across the huge territory. “It was necessary to organise the flow of aircraft in a new way, more efficiently, so that the capacity increased and there was enough space for everyone,” says federal air transport regulator Rosaviatsia. Rosaviatsia says the Moscow zone’s structure was developed more than 35 years ago. The zone handles 60% of all flights in Russian airspace and covers over 100 airports and airfields. But the regulator says the airspace has an “unprecedented” number of restricted regions and prohibited areas, which “significantly reduce” the capacity available to civil aircraft. The new structure will cut the average flight time in the Moscow zone by 15%, and the sector length by 21%, claims Rosaviatsia – even with a 50% rise in flight activity. Air traffic controller workload will be halved, it adds, and arriving flights will experience a 70% reduction in delays during approach.<br/>