News
Asia-Pacific airline lobby boss wants blanket quarantine rules abandoned
July 24th 2020
Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) director general, Subhas Menon, said this week initiatives to open up air travel during the coronavirus pandemic such as travel bubbles and green lanes had failed to take off because they were impractical and inherently unscaleable. Read More »
Additionally, the blanket quarantine measures imposed on arriving travellers was a major obstacle to passengers regaining their confidence in flying and made international air travel extremely daunting.
Menon advocates selective use of quarantine measures for passengers originating from higher risk locations as well as a common understanding on the use of COVID-19 testing as an additional risk mitigation measure in screening international passengers, based on mutual acceptance.
“International isolation is not a sustainable long-term solution for any government given the importance of travel and trade in supporting global economic and social activity," Menon said in a statement.
"After more than six months, the lack of a framework of harmonised or mutually recognised measures that are pragmatic, consistent and based on robust risk assessment, will not only irretrievably hurt the region’s airlines, but more importantly, negatively impact the region’s tourism and trade prospects and millions of livelihoods.
"We must take a pragmatic approach to restarting flights gradually while mitigating risks to restore confidence and trust in the reliability of everyday air travel.”
Apart from a handful of bilateral arrangements, such as the green lane between some cities in Mainland China and Singapore, most international borders remain closed to foreign visitors.
Domestically, there was encouraging news for some airlines with a number of markets in the Asia-Pacific increasing their schedules as travel restrictions were eased.
Pan-Asian low-cost carrier (LCC) group, AirAsia, said this week it was increasing domestic flights in Malaysia by 30% from July to August.
Japan's two major airline groups, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL), have announced domestic capacity in August would be at levels near to the network they operated before the COVID-19 outbreak.
In India, more than 60,000 passengers daily have flown a domestic flight since intra-country air services resumed two months ago.
However, the collapse in international air travel demand was hurting carriers such as the Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines groups because they have no domestic networks.
"Asia-Pacific airlines remain fully committed to working closely with governments and other industry stakeholders to progressively restore international air links in a safe and secure manner, serving the needs of the travelling public and enabling the industry to continue to fulfil its key role in supporting wider global economic recovery,” Menon said.
The latest International Air Transport Association's (IATA) airline financial monitor, published this week, said initial results for the three months to June 30, 2020 indicated the airline industry would post its "worst quarterly financial performance", extending the losses of the first three months of the year when COVID-19 became widespread across all regions.
"Although airlines immediately imposed stringent cost-cutting measures to preserve cash and limit the impact of unprecedented revenue loss, the industry continues to face falling cash balances," the report said.
A sample of 30 Asia-Pacific Airlines revealed the region suffered a collective net loss of US$6.6 billion in the three months to March 30, with an earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin of -18.8%, IATA said.
The report said airlines were expected to remain under pressure from a cash flow perspective, even as travel demand recovered, given the vouchers handed out when flights were cancelled would be used to book travel. This was not supportive for cash generation.
"As travel demand is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels quickly, airlines expect to continue burning cash at least until the end of this year," IATA said.
