Tag Archives: coronavirus

Since the start of the lockdown in late March, all scheduled passenger flights to India had been halted. While foreign airlines have been operating to repatriate citizens of other countries out of the country. Only a few of repatriation flights have been operated back to India in this period. The government of India has announced that it will begin organising …

Following the recently announced decision to the lockdown in India, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has officially extended cancellation of domestic passenger flights in India till 17 May 2020. On 23 March, airlines were ordered to temporarily stop their operations till the end of March. However, that period was extended with the announcement of the original lockdown. The grounding was …

A couple of weeks back we saw Lufthansa announce its plans to reduce its fleet by retiring some of their A380s and 747s amongst other aircraft. At the time it was also announced that subsidiaries Austrian and Swiss would also see reductions but no further details were given. Austrian has now laid out its future plan. The airline suspended its …

In a time where political leaders are appealing to citizens to do the “right things”, where some businesses highlight values of profit over purpose and where all need to come together to tide over this crisis collectively, the actions of airlines and the lack of accountability have left many perplexed. Specifically: the non-refunding of passenger monies – an unfair and …

Polish Aviation Group (PGL), the parent company of LOT Polish Airlines has cancelled its takeover of German leisure carrier Condor. The Takeover Condor was owned by now-defunct Thomas Cook Group which went into liquidation in September 2019. The airline was given a bridge loan by the German government to keep operating since it had a working business model and to …

The majority of the global aircraft fleet is grounded at the moment and airlines do not expect demand to return to the pre coronavirus levels any time soon. As such, some airlines have begun longer-term planning of their fleets – in many cases accelerating the retirements of their older aircraft. American is retiring it’s Embraer 190s, 76 Boeing 737-800s, its …

As the airline industry grapples with the largest demand shock in history, India’s skies are closed to all passenger traffic. 650 aircraft are grounded, cash-flows have dried up and pay-cuts and layoffs are the new normal. It does not help that the corona crisis came at a time where the country was also dealing with a banking crisis. Add to …

Boeing has announced that it will suspend all aircraft production at their factories in the Puget Sound area in Washington, USA. The shutdown is due to the prevailing state of emergency declared in Washington and due to the continuing spread of the Covid-19 virus. Boeing is reducing operations today and will shut down on 25 March 2020. The shutdown will …

As of this writing, forty airlines across the globe have announced a complete grounding of their fleet. Others ranging from Emirates and Lufthansa to AirAsia, Qantas and AirFrance-KLM are cutting capacity to as high as 90%. Massive layoffs, bankruptcies and airline shutdowns are likely. All this havoc driven by a particle that is one-billionth of a meter (a nanometer) in …

As the Coronavirus impact spreads and airlines prepare to brace for impact, the airline industry is facing its gravest challenge yet. Casualties have started. FlyBe – the largest regional airline in the UK has already ceased operations after an unsuccessful buyout and attempted turnaround. Other airline failures are all but certain. Forecasts from various industry quarters including IATA estimate a …

As the coronavirus continues to spread it is wreaking havoc on the airline industry. With 95,484 confirmed cases and 3,286 deaths, a vaccine and cure are yet to be found. Each day new cases are reported and air travel continues to be impacted. Forecasts from various industry quarters including IATA estimate a drastic decline in demand. Losses emanating from this …

Earlier this week, the US government began implementing new rules for travel from China in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The US has already issued a level 4 advisory urging residents to avoid outbound travel to China. Additionally, flights from China will be contained to seven airports (New York JFK, Chicago O’Hare, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Honolulu, and Los …