Air travel was gaining momentum. Now what?

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/>