India's Minister for Civil Aviation, Hardeep Singh Puri, said on his Twitter account late yesterday “domestic civil aviation operations would recommence in a calibrated manner from Monday 25th May 2020", having been suspended since late March as part of the country's efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus.Read More » The minister said airports and airlines were being informed to be ready for operations, while standard operating procedures (SOP) for passenger movement would be issued separately by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
South Korea’s Air Busan will restart international services on July 1 with nonstop flights from its Busan hub to Hong Kong and Macau, local media reported today. The airline, part of the Asiana Airlines group, has not flown internationally since March 8 due to COVID-19.
Singapore would gradually be reopened for international transit passengers flying through Changi Airport from June 2, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) said in a statement on Wednesday. The CAAS said airlines would have to submit their proposals for “transfer lanes” for the handling of transit passengers. These passengers would be prevented from mixing with other travellers at the airport and accommodated in designated facilities in the transit precinct.
China Eastern Airlines and its Shanghai Airlines subsidiary planned to operate 19 international flights a week in June: 16 from Shanghai Pudong, two from Kunming and one from Nanjing, the airline said on its website yesterday. The figure was down from 20 international flights a week the two carriers have been operating this month.
The Japanese National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) said the country received 2,900 visitor arrivals in April, a 99.9% reduction from 2.93 million in the prior corresponding period. It was the lowest number of visitor arrivals in Japan since records began in 1964, the JNTO said yesterday.
Thailand's Ministry of Finance plans to offload a 3.17% holding in Thai Airways International (THAI) to a national investment fund, which would put the level of government ownership in the airline below 50% and remove its state enterprise status, local media reported. The removal of state enterprise status would allow THAI to proceed with a planned restructure and rehabilitation through Thailand's Central Bankruptcy Court that was announced earlier this week.
The owner and operator of Gold Coast Airport said yesterday the airport on the New South Wales-Queensland border handled less than 2,000 passengers in April, down about 99.6% from some 560,000 passengers 12 months earlier. Queensland Airports Ltd (QAL) CEO, Chris Mills, said in a statement there were about three return flights a week flying into and out of Gold Coast Airport.
The numbers compared with about 420 flights a week before the country’s federal and state governments introduced travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S.’s Delta Air Lines has announced it planned to restart nonstop passenger flights between the U.S. and mainland China in June. The preliminary schedule, published on the Delta website, said the airline, which has had cargo-only service from Atlanta and Los Angeles to Shanghai Pudong, intended to add daily passenger service from Detroit to Shanghai Pudong and from Seattle to Shanghai Pudong, subject to government approval.
