American Airlines axes Hong Kong-Dallas service as another carrier pulls routes amid city’s tough Covid-19 aircrew rules
- World’s largest airline slashes several international services, blaming Boeing for not delivering new aircraft
- American Airlines has suspended some of its flights to Hong Kong since February 2020 over city’s stringent Covid-19 rules for aircrew
The world’s largest airline revealed on Thursday that it planned to discontinue, delay or scale back several international flights ahead of the summer, blaming Boeing for being unable to deliver new aircraft and causing a shortfall in the availability of widebody jets.
Swiss flag carrier suspends flights to Hong Kong over strict quarantine regime
On top of AA withdrawing its Hong Kong route from March next year, which also ranks as the longest passenger flight on its schedule, services to Beijing, Shanghai and Sydney will also be “significantly” reduced, while the introduction of a new service from Seattle to Bangalore has been delayed.
Vasu Raja, the airline’s chief revenue officer, told staff in a memo that the carrier would stop flying to Hong Kong, Scotland’s Edinburgh and Shannon in Ireland.
“We’ll continue to evaluate these routes as more aircraft become available and would like to be able to serve them again in the future,” he wrote.
The direct links to Dallas Fort Worth, the home base of the carrier, consistently offered cheap economy fares and access to harder-to-reach cities across the Americas.
Hong Kong joined the American network back in 2014, connecting to and from Dallas in a flight taking about 15 to 16 hours. Two years later, the airline added a Los Angeles link.
The carrier has suspended some flights to Hong Kong since February last year and continued to defer the restart based on the strict Covid-19 protocols imposed on aircrew arriving in the city.
Staff testing positive for the coronavirus can be sent to hospital for an indefinite period. US airline unions have vehemently objected to such confinement.
“The delay in deliveries of the 787 certainly hasn’t helped, and that is causing AA to have another look at its network, and where it can deploy its long-haul aircraft most profitably,” said Henk Ombelet, head of advisory operations at aviation data company Ascend by Cirium.
“The travel restrictions to Hong Kong are clearly reducing demand, and I think AA must be expecting demand not to recover for a long time, and hence it has taken the decision not to return.”
According to Diio by Cirium aviation data, Hong Kong airport has 1,307 flights scheduled in December, a 91 per cent reduction on the same month in 2019.
Foreign aircrew rules have since become watertight, with flight staff only allowed to go from the airport to their hotel room and they must undergo frequent testing. All recovered patients in Hong Kong must undergo two weeks of additional quarantine after their discharge.
Positive cases have previously been identified in the aircrew of British Airways, Finnair, Virgin Atlantic and a number of cargo pilots.
British Airway, Swiss International Air Lines, Air France and Lufthansa last week temporarily suspended services. They were concerned at the threat to their operations of aircrew being confined to a government isolation camp for 21 days if positive Covid-19 tests were to emerge.
FedEx also moved to shut down its long-standing Hong Kong pilot base last month, after relocating its crews to San Francisco earlier in the year to skirt the city’s tough quarantine rules for aircrew.
Cathay Pacific, the city’s largest airline, has also struggled under the weight of the aircrew rules and Hong Kong’s dogged pursuit of zero-Covid.
Hong Kong has not recorded a local Covid-19 case in months. In the wake of the Omicron coronavirus variant, health authorities have further tightened quarantine rules for 37 countries.
