Orient Aviation's COVID-19 briefs: Department of Transportation doubles Chinese airline access to the U.S. to four round trip scheduled passenger flights a week
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) said on Monday (U.S. time) it would permit Chinese carriers to operate "in the aggregate, a total of four weekly round-trip scheduled passenger flights to and from the United States", which was an increase from the previous limit of two weekly flights.Read More » The DoT order said the four weekly flights was equivalent to U.S. flights the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) permitted to fly into China.
The order said the CAAC had informed the DoT U.S. carriers seeking to resume flights to the Mainland had been granted all necessary operating permissions by the relevant Chinese authorities. Recently, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines had been forced to postpone plans to resume scheduled passenger flights from various points in the U.S. to Shanghai because approvals for the services had not been granted.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) and its 100% subsidiary, SilkAir, carried a combined 9,000 passengers in May, a 99.6% reduction from 2.18 million passengers in the same month a year ago. Border controls and travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic severely impacted demand. The airline group's monthly traffic report, published yesterday, said the two full-service carriers had a combined load factor of 9.4%, a 70 percentage point drop from 79.4% 12 months earlier.
The airline group's Scoot experienced a 99.9% drop in passenger numbers in May, having carried 600 in the month, compared with 865,000 in May 2019. The LCC posted a load factor of 2.7%, which was 82.6 percentage points lower than 85.3% in the same month a year ago. In May, Scoot reduced its network to just two destinations – Hong Kong and Perth. Earlier this month, it resumed flights to destinations in Malaysia and China.
Airport Authority Hong Kong, the operator of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), said yesterday it would extend its relief package, in place since March, to July and August for airlines and tenants "in view of the prolonged impact of the COVID-19 pandemic”. The relief measures include waiving or reducing fees for landing, parking and ramp handling and reduced rents for tenants in the terminal among other concessions, the authority said in a statement.
In other Hong Kong news, the airport authority has announced passengers can transit through HKIA on flights operated by different airlines under the same air ticket "provided the passengers have checked through at the origin port with their boarding passes printed and baggage is tagged to the final destination". Passengers should confirm in advance they can enter their final destination, the HKIA website said.
Air China said in its monthly traffic report passengers on its domestic and international flights fell 57.1% to 4.1 million in May, while demand (RPK) was down 69.1% and passenger load factor dropped 12.7 percentage points to 67.5%. The Star Alliance member said capacity, measured by available seat kilometres (ASK), declined 38.2% on domestic routes and 96% on international routes.
China Eastern Airlines reported passenger numbers fell 61.7% to 4.2 million in May, from 10.9 million in the same month a year earlier, while RPKs dropped 69.4% and load factor slipped 17.5 percentage points to 64.6%. The airline's monthly traffic report said domestic ASKs were cut by 41.3%, compared with May 2019, while capacity on international routes was 95.4% lower.
China Southern Airlines (CSA) said it flew 5.9 million passengers in May, a 52.3% reduction from the same month in 2019. RPKs fell 61.4% and load factor was 14.6 percentage points lower at 66.8%. On the capacity front, CSA’s monthly traffic report showed domestic ASKs were down 34.3% in May and international ASKs were 93.4% lower.
There were 2,300 visitors to Australia in April, a 99.7% reduction from the same month in 2019, figures from Tourism Australia showed. New Zealand was the largest source of inbound visitors for the month, at 370, followed by the U.S. (180) and Germany (170).
