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Before the coronavirus, a decades-long aviation boom spawned a network of nearly 50,000 air routes that traversed the world. In less than a year, the pandemic has wiped almost a third of them off the map.
Singapore Airlines
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Why air routes are being cut down
Border closures, nationwide lockdowns and the fear of catching Covid-19 from fellow passengers have crippled commercial travel. As thousands of domestic and international connections disappear completely from airline timetables, the world has suddenly stopped shrinking. In Asia alone, 2,279 routes are not operating any more at all.
Airlines are being forced to ruthlessly cut down on routes with the most fragile profit margins, while airlines will try to keep the connections that feed passengers into larger travel hubs.
PTI
Impact on passengers
In years to come, overseas business trips and holidays will likely mean more airport stopovers, longer journey times, and perhaps an additional mode of transport. Even when an effective vaccine is found, the economic reality of the recovery may mean some non-stop flights are gone for good.
In Hervey Bay, a small tourist town on Australia’s east coast, residents are mourning their last direct air connection with Sydney, the nation’s main domestic and international gateway. The flight was one of eight regional routes scrapped by Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd. after it collapsed in April under $5 billion in debt.
NBT
Even Australia’s capital, Canberra, has been taken off from international maps. The city has no more direct flights overseas after Singapore Airlines ceased services from Singapore in September. Other routes that have been cut are still unclear.
“Some routes may never be put back”
In late January, 47,756 operational routes criss-crossed the world, more than half of them in the U.S., Western Europe and Northeast Asia, according to OAG Aviation Worldwide. By Nov. 2, there were just 33,416 routes on global schedules, the data show.
PTI
“It will take a good four or five years for connectivity to return to the same level we saw at the end of 2019,” the Live Mint report quoted Subhas Menon, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, which represents regional carriers including Singapore Air, China Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways, as saying. “Some of these routes may never be put back,” Menon told Live Mint.
Jobs lost
Before the coronavirus, the industry supported 65.5 million jobs — more than half of them indirectly through tourism — and had a global economic impact of $2.7 trillion, according to the 2019 Aviation Benefits Report, a study by industry groups including UN agency the International Civil Aviation Organization.
