Finland's national airline Finnair announced on Tuesday the firm is temporarily suspending routes to Nanjing and Beijing Daxing, China until the end of March.
The company said the reason for the break was due to China's ban on group travel from the country, prompted by the outbreak of the new coronavirus, a contagious disease which has killed at least 106 people in China and infected more than 4,500 others.
Finnair flights to Beijing Daxing will be suspended from 5 February through 29 March and the airline will temporarily cancel its Nanjing route between 8 Feburary to 29 March. Finnair normally shuttles passengers to Beijing Daxing three times a week and to Nanjing twice each week.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advise against all travel to Hubei Province due to the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak. If you’re in this area and able to leave, you should do so.
The FCO advise against all but essential travel to the rest of mainland China (not including Hong Kong and Macao). The Chinese government continue to impose further restrictions on movement within China in response to the coronavirus outbreak. It may become harder over the coming weeks for those who wish to leave China to do so. If you feel that you may want to leave China soon, you should consider making plans to do so before any further restrictions may be imposed.
ShanwickOceanic wrote:It'll be interesting to see how this develops from an airline traffic point of view.
Zak wrote:Germany is also considering to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan. But with the efficient decisionmaking here these days, that flight will probably be able to land at BER.
Passengers on a China Southern flight between Nagoya [and] Shanghai refused to board when they realized many of their fellow passengers were from Wuhan, the epicentre of the latest virus du jour.
According to a report in the International Business Times, some passengers on one of China Southern’s two daily flights between the cities recognized Wuhan accents among other passengers and became antagonistic towards them.
paul mcallister wrote:This will also have major implications for goods manufactured and imported from China I would think.
The Trump administration, while insisting the risk to Americans from coronavirus is low, nevertheless declared a public health emergency on Friday and announced the extraordinary step of barring entry to the United States of foreign nationals who have traveled to China.
In addition, starting on Sunday U.S. citizens who have traveled within the past two weeks to China's Hubei Province - epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic - will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of 14 days: the incubation period of the virus, officials said
ShanwickOceanic wrote:So are US citizens somehow immune to it in the rest of China? Seems like an odd way of doing things.
Finland’s state-owned airline Finnair has cancelled all flights to mainland China until 28 March because of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the Asian country.
Finnair is beginning co-determination talks with 700 long-haul pilots due to the coronavirus situation. The national airline has cancelled all of its roughly 200 flights to and from China through the end of March.
The negotiations, which begin next week, are aimed at gauging the need for temporary layoffs.
"We're preparing for a prolongation of this situation. Negotiations start next week and will include discussion of possible temporary furloughs," says Finnair's media relations director Päivyt Tallqvist.
ShanwickOceanic wrote:As my inbox fills with cancelled meetings right left and centre, and we're asked to consider working from home if at all possible, I wonder whether there will be longer-term effects on aviation that drag on well past the end of the quarantine measures.
Sure, we've been able to do videoconferencing (fairly) easily for years, but we've never had to. As time drags on and we get used to it, and especially with the likely economic impact of these measures squeezing budgets the world over, do you think there'll be a significant number of people who realise they don't actually need to fly?
IFEMaster wrote:I expect to not spend even 50% of my travel budget this year now.