International Air Transport Association (IATA) director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, said overnight the latest passenger traffic figures showed the month of "May was not quite as terrible as April". Read More » Demand, or revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), fell 91.3% for the month compared with 12 months ago. It was a slight improvement from the 94% year-on-year decline recorded in April. Available seat kilometres (capacity), was down 86%, while load factor slipped 31 percentage points to 50.7%.
The airline lobby group said there also was a slight improvement in the global freight market in May, with demand, measured by cargo tonne kilometres (CTK), 20.3% lower for the month compared with a year earlier. Available cargo tonne kilometres (ACTK) were down 34.7%. IATA said cargo capacity continued to be below demand due to the loss of belly cargo operations from grounded passenger aircraft.
American Airlines (AA) said overnight it was seeking government approval to switch its suspended Los Angeles-Shanghai Pudong service to Seattle-Shanghai. Elsewhere in its Asia-Pacific network, the oneworld alliance member said Dallas Fort Worth-Beijing Capital and Los Angeles-Sydney would resume in the 2021 northern hemisphere summer scheduling season.
Los Angeles-Auckland is planned to resume in the 2021 northern winter season alongside the previously announced new Seattle-Bangalore nonstop flight. AA Asia-Pacific flights not being reinstated include Los Angeles-Hong Kong and Los Angeles-Beijing Capital.
Thai Airways International's (THAI) latest traffic report showed the airline flew 1,672 passengers in May, representing 0.12% of the 1,411,908 passengers it flew 12 months ago. Load factor dropped 64.7 percentage points to 3.8%. THAI operated 259 flights in May, down 95.7% from 5,977 flights in the same month in 2019.
Lion Air and its sister carriers in Indonesia, Batik Air and Wings Air, have begun offering coronavirus testing for passengers at a cost of 95,000 rupiah (US$6.63). The service is available at four Lion Air offices in Jakarta, but there are plans to expand the testing program to other cities, ticketing sales offices and airports, a Lion Air statement said. The airline group is implementing its COVID-19 testing in collaboration with Lion Air Medika Clinic.
South Korean low-cost carrier, Air Busan, has pushed back the resumption of 29 international routes from Busan and Seoul Incheon to either mid or late September from a previously planned restart in July. The affected routes, published on the Air Busan website, include Fukuoka, Nagoya, Osaka Kansai and Tokyo Narita, Chengdu, Haikou, Qingdao, Sanya, Xian, Yanji and Zhangjiajie in China, Hong Kong and Macao. The schedule changes also affected nine destinations in the LCC’s Southeast Asian network: Boracay, Cebu, Da Nang, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Kota Kinabalu, Nha Trang, Siem Reap, Vientiane, Ulanbaatar and Vladivostok.
The Australian state of Victoria has stopped all international flights for two weeks as part of efforts to strengthen quarantine procedures for arriving passengers. Flights are being diverted to other states following a fresh outbreak of the coronavirus in the Victorian capital, Melbourne. Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, told reporters on Tuesday the two-week period would be used to "reset" the program after an infection control breach in one of the hotels used for the quarantine of international arrivals.
