China’s air travel recovery hit as airlines scrap flights again

For the second week in a row, the recovery in global air traffic has taken a step back. Airline seat capacity declined about a quarter of a percentage point to 68% of the amount offered in the same week of 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted a multi-year travel expansion fueled by the rising number of middle-class tourists from China and Southeast Asia. The latest setback, attributed largely to the spread of the delta variant, follows an almost 1-point decline the prior week, according to Bloomberg’s weekly flight tracker, which uses data from aviation specialist OAG to monitor the pulse of the comeback. The biggest challenges are once again in Asia. The broadest virus outbreak in China since the pandemic first began has forced officials there to suspend flights and increase testing of airport workers. That’s taken a chunk out of the nation’s massive domestic aviation trade, which has performed the best among the largest pre-pandemic global markets. In the U.S., capacity has been stuck for several weeks due to staffing constraints and slow progress toward lifting border restrictions with Europe and other markets. In Europe, the only region where so-called vaccine passports are in widespread use, the comeback made further progress, though it, too, will be limited by the failure to fully reopen transatlantic travel, according to Rob Morris, global head of consultancy at Cirium, which tracks air traffic. The question for airlines now is whether vaccines can be distributed quickly enough to counter the spread of new coronavirus variants.<br/>