Travel analytics company, ForwardKeys, shares that the United States’ transatlantic travel ban on most nonUS residents entering the country from the Schengen area, introduced inresponse to COVID-19, has put 1.3 million airline seats at riskof elimination from the market as of midnight last night, when the exclusionwas extended to the UK and Ireland. This is in addition to the 2 million seats at risk as of Friday.
The airlines which look set to suffer theworst are both US carriers, Delta and United, which each stand to lose around400,000 seats. BA is next, followed, in order, by American, Lufthansa, VirginAtlantic, Air France, Aer Lingus, KLM and Norwegian.
In terms of countries, the UK is set to beworst hit, potentially losing over a million seats. It is followed in order byGermany, standing to lose around 500,000, France, around 400,000, theNetherlands around 300,000, Spain, around 200,000 and then Italy andSwitzerland, each with around 100,000.
Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys explains, “While a few flights are still operating, bringing permanent US residents andtheir immediate family back home, this is an unprecedented collapse in airtravel. In an incredibly short space of time, this ban has decimated theworld’s busiest and most profitable segment of the aviation industry, transatlantictravel.”
