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Asia-Pacific carriers shrink networks as passenger demand falls away
February 21st 2020
Airlines across the region have announced more cuts to their networks into China and elsewhere in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Read More »
This week, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Qantas outlined planned service reductions in coming months.
Figures from the World Health Organisation showed there had been some 75,200 confirmed cases in 26 countries of people diagnosed with COVID-19. There have been 2,006 deaths.
On February 14, Qantas said it would extend the suspension of its Sydney-Shanghai nonstop flight, its sole destination in China, until May.
It also will operate 12 fewer flights a week between Australia and Hong Kong and one of its twice-daily Melbourne-Singapore services would be down-gauged from a four-class A380 service, with either 484 or 485 seats, to three-class, 236-seat 787-9s.
The changes represented an 18% reduction in Qantas's capacity to Asia. There also were frequency reductions on trans-Tasman and domestic routes, Qantas said in a statement on Thursday.
Qantas group chief executive, Alan Joyce, said the network changes were the equivalent of taking 18 aircraft out of service until the end of May and would affect about 700 full-time jobs.
"To avoid job losses we’ll be using leave balances across our workforce of 30,000 and freezing recruitment to help ride this out," Joyce said in a statement.
"We’ll also take advantage of having some aircraft on the ground by bringing forward planned maintenance."
Qantas's low-cost carrier (LCC) unit, Jetstar, will operate fewer services between Australia and Japan and Jetstar Asia was reducing total seat capacity by 15%.
Japan Airlines said this week it would further reduce its flights to China and suspend some services to South Korea in response to the drop in demand. The network changes involved flights from Japan to Beijing, Dalian, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin. There were also reduced flight frequencies to Hong Kong from Tokyo Narita and Haneda, as well as on the Osaka-Taipei route.
"Due to the coronavirus outbreak in mainland China, the carrier has seen a decrease in travel demand and a number of countries are implementing travel restrictions for those that have visited the country during a specific period," the airline said on its website.
"As a result, flight and cabin crew who may have operated flights to mainland China are being affected by these regulations and going forward, the company may be unable to offer scheduled services throughout its global network."
Also this week, Singapore Airlines (SIA) said it would temporarily reduce services across its route network in response to COVID-19 between now and the end of May. The frequency cuts represented about 670 flights to some 40 destinations in Europe, the U.S., Asia and Oceania on the SIA and SilkAir network. This was in addition to previously announced cuts to mainland China.
Cathay Pacific this week, when announcing its January traffic results, said it planned to reduce capacity by 40% in February and March, which was more than the 30% cut it had estimated previously.
