The difficult commercial decision on whether to suspend flights to China may be taken out of the hands of U.S. airlines altogether after the White House hinted that all U.S. flights to China may be halted.
Earlier media reports suggested the Trump Administration had already made a decision to ban flights between the U.S. and China as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread. CNBC reported that the White House had reached out to U.S. airline executives to announce this. But late Tuesday night, officials denied those reports and stated that a final decision has not been made.
An anonymous official told USA Today:
“The White House did not call the airlines and hasn’t asked for a suspension of flights between the U.S. and China.”
Already the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has recommended that U.S. travelers avoid all but non-essential travel to China. Meanwhile, British Airways has suspended all service to Mainland China, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, and JetStar Asia have cut back service, while Lion Air and Seoul Air have also suspended all service to China. Yesterday, United announced February cutbacks to Mainland China and Hong Kong service.
> Read More: United Airlines Will Dramatically Reduce China Service In February
For now, the Trump administration is still in a wait-and-see-mode. The only on-the-record statement we have is from Health and Human Service Secretary Alex Azar, who said:
“It’s important to not take anything off the table.”
CONCLUSION
Currently, more than 6,000 people have contracted the coronavirus with at least 132 deaths linked to the mysterious virus. Based upon United’s voluntary suspension of flights yesterday and similar moves by British Airways and several Asian carriers today, I tend to think a government ban will not be necessary and airlines will act cut flights in a more aggressive way in the days ahead.
I am just sick of this racism. Just because those idiots in china are different culture we can’t call out their uncivilized ways and they get away with all kinds of crap. Enough special leeway to the Chinese. They should have to pay for disruption to the global trade. China should pay each country in the world 1% of their GDP.
And all because they can’t eat llike civilized people.
Also free Tibet and xinjiang from Chinese occupation.
I don’t think calling other people uncivilized make you a very civilized man.
China is doing its best to stop virus from spreading and I don’t think your rude comment helps with anything
China might be doing its best now. But that should be put in the context of their miserable failure to do ANYTHING to curb the illegal trade in wildlife, a key issue in the genesis of this outbreak. Not only that, they permitted the co-location of these vile rare animal slaughterhouses with the wet markets in which people buy their everyday produce. Both were LONG KNOWN to be factors in SARS. Beijing’s failures in public health / food safety should not be forgotten or forgiven easily.
On the other hand, this is the country in which the regulations were so lax, that despicable profiteers were able to poison thousands of babies vis the melamine tainted milk scandal, so nothing is surprising.
Well said!
The Republic of China is not a miserable failure. It’s the People’s Republic of China.
EVA is a good airline.
It does seem like the airlines and governments are making their own precautionary decisions despite the WHO not declaring this as a global health emergency.
Well said!
Oops! Disregard this. I meant to reply to the comment above.
It would be a courageous decision by our president.
It would help but only if Immigration could track where all passengers came from. People will still fly from China to another country and then fly to the US so unless they track that it won’t solve the problem.
Air France-KLM was quite honest about their decision to reduce flights (China flights are good for 6% of their business): it has nothing to do with precaution, their decision entirely based on economics. The decreased demand for flights to/from China leave these flights less than 80% occupied, which makes them not profitable, so it makes sense to reduce the number of flights for now (source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2320853-vliegen-naar-china-waarom-de-ene-maatschappij-wel-en-de-andere-niet.html)