Hong Kong Special Administrative Region chief executive, Carrie Lam, told reporters yesterday she hoped to remove a 14-day quarantine requirement for Hong Kong residents returning to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from China in November.Read More » The scheme will initially be limited by a quota, she said.
Lam also said the government was planning to implement the proposed air travel bubble with Singapore by November. Lam said the work with Singapore on the bubble, first announced earlier this month, was not affected by two recent COVID-19 cases at Singapore Changi airport. Singapore minister for transport, Ong Ye Kung, told the Business Times discussions with Hong Kong about arrangements to activate the bubble were going well. He shared Lam's assessment of a November start.
Airlines in the Asia-Pacific carried 1.09 million international passengers in September, down 96.4% from 30 million in the same month a year earlier. Despite the substantial year-on-year decline, the September figure was up slightly from 1.01 million international passengers in August, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) said in its monthly traffic report covering 40 airlines based in the region and published today. Passenger load factor was 31.7% in September, a decline from 78.5% a year earlier and 35.5% in August.
AAPA director general, Subhas Menon, said airlines were struggling to survive as international air travel remained severely curtailed by onerous travel restrictions. "Without recapitalisation or fund injections, several of the region’s carriers face an existential threat," Menon said in a statement. "Thousands of aviation jobs already are lost, with more at risk.” Menon said the AAPA was committed to working with governments and industry stakeholders to safely restart international air travel as a matter of urgency.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said overnight it expected total industry revenues in calendar 2021 to be down 46% from the 2019 figure of US$838 billion. This forecast represented a more severe decline from IATA's previous estimate of a 29% drop. The revised forecast was due to a delay in the recovery from COVID-19 given fresh outbreaks of the virus in various parts of the world and the ongoing travel restrictions, IATA said. “The fourth quarter of 2020 will be extremely difficult and there is little indication the first half of 2021 will be significantly better so long as borders remain closed and/or arrival quarantines remain in place," IATA director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, said in a statement.
Other IATA analysis published overnight showed airlines have not been able to cut costs by as much as revenues had fallen due to COVID-19. The airline lobby group said operating costs for the second quarter of calendar 2020 fell by 48%, based on a sample of 76 airlines, compared with a 73% decline in operating revenues. “There is little good news on the cost front in 2021," de Juniac said. "Even if we maximise our cost cutting, we still won’t have a financially sustainable industry in 2021."
Garuda Indonesia CEO, Irfan Setiaputra, said the airline had made the tough decision to cut 700 jobs in November due to the coronavirus pandemic, local media reported yesterday. The job cuts represented about 10% of the company's workforce of about 7,300 staff. Setiaputera said there was yet to be any significant improvement in the market.
Air Niugini today resumed nonstop flights between Port Moresby and Hong Kong operated by 767-300ERs. The airline said in a statement Cathay Pacific would codeshare on the once a week service, which would support the exports of live crabs, lobsters and other fresh produce from Papua New Guinea to Hong Kong. Air Niugini CEO, Bruce Alabaster, said Hong Kong was a major global gateway and a connecting hub for both passengers and freight. "With Cathay Pacific’s global marketing reach and attractive through connections to destinations worldwide, we are confident our Hong Kong service will quickly become popular with both travellers and freight shippers," Alabaster said in a statement.
