"Airlines see loss reaching $157 billion before virus clears" by Christopher Jasper and Charlotte Ryan Bloomberg, November 24, 2020
Record airline losses from the coronavirus outbreak will continue to mount next year as anticipated vaccination programs take time to revive travel demand, according to the industry’s main trade group.
The International Air Transport Association on Tuesday called the crisis “devastating and unrelenting.”
Then you should stand up against this fraud. The fact that they don't exposes them as either collaborators are impotent actors.
The forecast comes as airlines cling to hopes that passenger testing combined with the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations next year will spur governments to ease travel restrictions they say are to blame for holding back bookings. IATA said the industry won’t turn cash positive until the fourth quarter of 2021, though that’s earlier than expected before recent advances in vaccine tests.
“The history books will record 2020 as the industry’s worst financial year, bar none,” IATA chief executive Alexandre de Juniac said, adding that the loss expected next year, while lower, will be the second-worst ever.
Willie Walsh, the former CEO of British Airways parent IAG SA who takes over from De Juniac in April, criticized countries for effectively barring people from traveling and said he aims to change attitudes among policy makers.
“We know they want to fly,” he told IATA’s online annual meeting after being confirmed in the role, “but they have been denied that freedom by a disjointed political response and certain governments which failed to adopt measures that would have allowed services to continue.”
IATA predicts that carriers will lose almost $39 billion in 2021, more than double the June prediction. That’s on top of a $118.5 billion deficit this year, up 40 percent from the previous outlook after a new wave of lockdowns wiped out a brief resurgence in flights late in the northern summer.
The biggest concern is that the industry will run out of cash before the vaccine boost kicks in, IATA chief economist Brian Pearce said in a presentation.
Then the government will bail them out again, no doubt. It's still a service they want even after they cull most of us.
A spate of airline failures is therefore likely without further government help on top of $173 billion already received, he said. Carriers in emerging markets where vaccines might not be available until 2022 are most vulnerable.
Industry revenue will likely decline by half a trillion dollars this year to $328 billion following a 61 percent drop in traveler numbers to levels last seen 17 years ago, according to IATA. That will edge back up to $459 billion in 2021. Passenger traffic overall is unlikely to reach prepandemic levels until 2024, Pearce said.
De Juniac called for borders to be reopened now, without quarantines, using testing and travel corridors, while cautioning against “complex” route-specific requirements once vaccines become the norm.
He declined to endorse Qantas Airways Ltd. CEO Alan Joyce’s suggestion that carriers require future international passengers to have a COVID-19 shot before they fly, saying it’s too early to speculate about what their role will be.
An increasing number of airlines are turning to digital health passports as a way to certify testing results. The Commons Project Foundation said Tuesday that JetBlue Airways Corp., Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Swiss International, United Airlines Holdings Inc., and Virgin Atlantic Airways will begin rolling out its CommonPass mobile app to passengers in December from New York, Boston, London, and Hong Kong.
For a test that is flawed, faulty, and that doesn't detect infection or COVID-19.
In other words, COVID is to be used by the totalitarian world government to restrict travel based on compliance with their evil agenda.
IATA plans to hold its next annual meeting in Boston in June. The association’s new board chairman Robin Hayes, CEO of JetBlue Airways, which has a hub in the city, said he expects the event to take place live and in person.
Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr, who Hayes succeeds, said business people are beginning to tire of communicating via video conference and that most are eager to fly as soon as possible.....
There may be hope for us yet.
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"Travel down more than 70 percent at airports across New England during Thanksgiving week" by Matt Berg Globe Correspondent, November 27, 2020
Nearly 150,000 people headed to New England airports in the week leading up to Thanksgiving — a dramatic decline in travel numbers compared to last year, as millions of people across the country heeded public health officials’ warnings to stay home with coronavirus cases climbing.
There were 147,935 travelers combined at six major New England airports from Friday through Wednesday — down more than 70 percent compared to the same time period last year, when nearly 500,000 people headed to those airports, according to Transportation Security Administration officials.
The report looked at Logan International Airport in Boston, Bradley International Airport in Connecticut, Burlington International Airport in Vermont, Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire, T. F. Green Airport in Rhode Island, and Portland International Jetport in Maine. A breakdown of data on the number of travelers at each airport was not provided.
This year’s numbers defied historical Thanksgiving travel trends.
At Logan, the number of passengers has been down about 80 percent consistently “for several months now,” according to Jennifer Mehigan, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Port Authority.
At airports across the country, travel was down nearly 60 percent this past week compared to last year, according to TSA data.
The risk of contracting COVID-19 on a plane isn’t the first concern of health experts, according to Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center. Compared to the number of flights since the pandemic began, there have been “relatively few” transmission events, she said.
“It’s the fact that people are moving around the country,” Doron said.
Yeah, that's a problem for medical commissars.
With different rates of infection in communities across the United States, Doron’s worry is that people who travel to areas where COVID-19 is more prevalent may contract the virus and bring it back, and vice versa.
“To me, that’s the main reason not to travel,” Doron said.
Megan Ranney, associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University, told the Globe on Monday that, “you could be traveling when you’re asymptomatic and infectious, and you’ve now spread the virus across state lines or across towns.”
Doron said she was concerned when she saw long lines at testing facilities in the week leading up to Thanksgiving — “longer than we’ve ever seen before” — suggesting that people were getting tested to meet travel restrictions or attend gatherings.
Sorry, I can't hear you liars over the roar of the jet engines.
Coronavirus cases spiked across the country over the time leading up to Thanksgiving, prompting public officials to issue warnings against travel for the holidays. As a result of such gatherings, experts predict a surge in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks.
“Right now, we are looking at the real possibility of a second wave that could overwhelm our health care system,” Doron said.
These are the same crock of shit lies they told us last spring as they pre-program the narrative.
Despite higher travel volumes during the holiday season, the overall decline in travel was expected among transportation officials, said Daniel Velez, a TSA spokesman; however, Thanksgiving week still proved to be the busiest days of the year nationwide — by far.
“Numbers are hard to predict throughout a pandemic; however, we do expect an uptick in travel during this time period,” Velez said.
With the possibility of a vaccine being approved soon, Doron hopes people will realize the benefits of hunkering down now and stopping the spread, so they can resume traveling for holiday gatherings in the future.
“People are wanting to be with family so badly,” she said. “Hopefully [the possibility of a vaccine] gives people hope that this is the only time public officials will be asking them” to stay home for the holidays.
I'm tired of the false promises by you f**ks, 'kay?
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Time to check in at Logan:
"With Logan traffic still down, Massport cuts 25 percent of its workforce; Hundreds of jobs will be eliminated as the agency deals with a $100 million-plus budget gap" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, November 19, 2020
The Massachusetts Port Authority is trimming about 25 percent of its workforce through layoffs and voluntary buyouts as it reacts to an unprecedented plunge in air travel at Logan Airport due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The port authority avoided layoffs in its first big round of budget cuts in the spring, but not this time. The downturn in jet passenger traffic has been far more protracted than Massport executives anticipated, forcing them to plug a new shortfall exceeding $100 million in this fiscal year’s budget.
“We are trending below our worst-case, business-activity forecast at Logan Airport,” Massport chief executive Lisa Wieland told the port authority board on Thursday. “It’s hard, and I hoped we wouldn’t be here. Unfortunately, we are.”
Yeah, looks like you got took when you threw in with the nefarious Great Reset, huh?
Rather than rebounding as Wieland and others had hoped, the number of passengers actually declined in August from July levels, and again in September. Only about 633,000 passengers were tracked through Logan in September, an 82 percent plunge compared with the same month a year ago. The number of flights, meanwhile, was down 64 percent, year over year.
Cue the violins, pour the wine, cut the cheese, and cry me a river.
Logan remains one of the hardest-hit airports in the country, according to data from the Airlines for America trade group. The cuts represent what is believed to be the biggest reduction in force for Massport in its seven-decade history. The reductions are taking place across all wage levels and departments.
It needed the pruning I'm $ure!
The voluntary buyouts, which offer one-time severance payments of at least $20,000, will begin immediately, while the layoffs are expected to start in January. The number of layoffs will depend heavily on how many employees opt for voluntary buyouts.
The sharp decline in air travel this year has hammered Massport’s main revenue sources at Logan, including landing fees, terminal rents, and parking. Massport has other operations, such as its cargo and cruise terminals in South Boston and its airport in Worcester, which is no longer served by any commercial flights because of the pandemic, but they each represent a small portion of the agency’s annual revenue.
State officials don’t expect a full recovery for several years, particularly in business travel.
Timed to the Great Reset, no doubt.
“We have to be realistic about the right size for our workforce,” said Stephanie Pollack, a Massport board member and Governor Charlie Baker’s transportation secretary.
Logan’s cratering fortunes represent a stark about-face for what was a fast-growing airport, particularly with regard to international travel.
“It was easy to be a board member,” reflected Sean O’Brien, a Massport board member who leads the Teamsters Local 25. “The economy was good. Travel projections [were] at an all-time high.”
Then the pandemic hit, and those travel projections shifted dramatically. Massport is now bracing for fewer than 10 million passengers in its 2021 fiscal year, a level not seen at Logan since the 1970s. In 2019, more than 42 million people traveled through the airport.
“No one wants to be putting people out of work,” O’Brien added. “We’ve mitigated as much damage as we possibly can. [The workforce reduction] is the responsible and right thing to do at this point in time.”
That's your union rep standing up for you!
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The members should tell him to take a long walk of a $hort pier:
"Trustees of Reservations offers a glimpse of its first urban waterfront park, on Boston Harbor; The nonprofit has raised $20m so far for the project, dubbed Piers Park 3" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, November 22, 2020
The rotting, nearly four-acre pier near Logan Airport in East Boston is a blank canvas of sorts, just waiting to be turned into a piece of art as Boston’s newest waterfront park. Now, the Trustees of Reservations is soliciting community input to decide what this artwork should look like.
The project, dubbed Piers Park 3, could cost $30 million to $40 million. The group has quietly been raising money among its influential donor base, with about $20 million committed so far, according to Jocelyn Forbush, executive vice president at the nonprofit. The goal is nothing less ambitious than designing a “jaw-dropping park” with amazing views of the city skyline, working with the famed landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Forbush said.
“We’re well on our way,” Forbush said. “That doesn’t mean we’re done. We have a lot of work to do as we push the design work forward to continue to raise those funds.”
Amazing how the ruling cla$$ can come up with so much money to redesign society while we are all sidelined, huh?
The group has begun meeting with community organizations to seek ideas. Last week, it met with the Eagle Hill Civic Association and the East Boston Greenway Council. Several more meetings are scheduled in the coming weeks, and the Trustees of Reservations will host its own community meeting on Jan. 12 (virtually, of course). Ideas under discussion include a kayak launch and manmade tidal pools. Forbush hopes construction can start in 2022 and be completed by late 2023 or early 2024.
The group is working with the Massachusetts Port Authority in two ways: The port authority owns the pier where the park would be built, and it is designing a park expansion with the community (dubbed Piers Park 2) on land next to the pier. Massport built the first phase of the Piers Park complex about 25 years ago. In total, the entire complex will span some 15 acres.
This project will be the first Trustees waterfront park in Boston, but it won’t be the last, not if Forbush has anything to say about it. The nonprofit has been on the hunt for other park opportunities along the harbor, particularly with a focus on increasing access to the shoreline and improving its resiliency to storms and tides. This represents a pivot, of sorts, for a group best known for properties in the suburbs and outlying towns. Other locations that have caught the organization’s eye in Boston include Dry Dock No. 4 (behind the concert pavilion in South Boston), Fort Point Channel, and Sargent’s Wharf (on the edge of the North End).
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Related:
"Plans are underway to transform a rotting, nearly four-acre pier near Logan Airport in East Boston into an urban waterfront park. The effort is being led by the Trustees of Reservations, which said it has already raised millions of dollars to fund the concept. The project, near Marginal Street, has garnered a lot of interest, but also raises many questions. Here’s what we know so far....."
Also see:
Coast Guard to search all night for missing boat with four fishermen 20 miles off Provincetown coast
Fierce winds hampered the Coast Guard’s search Monday for the fishing vessel Emmy Rose and its four crew members in an area of the Atlantic Ocean about 20 miles northeast of Provincetown.
Searchers will not resume the mission unless new information comes to light, according to the Coast Guard.
The US Coast Guard decided to end its search for the Emmy Rose, a fishing vessel that sank Monday some 20 miles off the coast.
Should have vacationed in the mountains instead:
"Logan now offers COVID-19 tests for passengers; XpresCheck has set up a modular facility inside Terminal E and can administer more than 400 tests a day" by Christopher Muther Globe Staff, November 23, 2020
As people return to airports for holiday travel in numbers not seen since the beginning of the pandemic, passengers now have the option of getting a COVID-19 test in the international arrivals area of Terminal E at Logan. Previously, testing at Logan was limited to airline employees.
For how long will it be optional?
According to XpresCheck, the company running the testing program, the modular facility constructed inside the terminal is located before TSA security checkpoints and contains seven separate testing rooms with the ability to administer more than 400 tests a day for passengers arriving and departing from all terminals. XpresCheck is offering three kinds of tests with prices varying by option: the Rapid Molecular COVID-19 test for $200, the Polymerase Chain Reaction test (PCR) for $75, or the Blood Antibody test for $75. A pairing of the Polymerase Chain Reaction test and the Blood Antibody test is available for $90.
Cha-CHING!
Results for the rapid test are available within 20 minutes. Results for the Polymerase Chain Reaction and the Blood Antibody tests are ready within two to three days and are sent to travelers on the company’s secure Internet portal. XpresCheck accepts insurance for the individual PCR and Blood Antibody test; people who receive the rapid test may be able to submit their own insurance claim after their visit.
The PCR tests are known to be faulty, and even the creator said they were not designed to diagnose infection.
All this fearful tyranny is based on lies.
Walk-ins are welcome from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but given the demand for COVID-19 tests across Massachusetts this week, appointments are recommended. Appointments can be made on the XpresCheck website at www.XpresCheck.com.
Experts have cautioned that a negative coronavirus test does not necessarily mean it’s safe to gather with others for Thanksgiving, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, said he’s worried that crowding at US airports from Thanksgiving travel could lead to a further surge in cases.
They really have your head on a swivel, don't they?!
The criminal Fraudci is worried about crowding in airports when but not the plane after a Defense Department study of the risk of catching the coronavirus on a packed commercial flight concluded that a person would have to be sitting next to an infectious passenger for at least 54 hours to receive a dangerous dose of the virus through the air.
There IS NO NEED for SOCIAL DISTANCING, folks!
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You are now cleared to board the plane:
"Boeing 737 Max is cleared by FAA to resume flights" by Niraj Chokshi New York Times, November 18, 2020
The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday cleared the way for Boeing’s 737 Max to resume flying, 20 months after it was grounded following two fatal crashes blamed on faulty software and a host of company and government failures.
Stop the plane, I'm getting off!
Would you feel safe in their tub of $hit?
The decision ends a devastating saga for Boeing, which had predicted billions of dollars in losses stemming from the Max crisis even before the coronavirus pandemic dealt a ruinous blow to global aviation. The agency’s chief, Stephen Dickson, signed an order Wednesday formally lifting the grounding.
Yeah, poor Boeing, not the people who frikkin' died!
This so-called "journali$m" is SICKENING!
“The path that led us to this point was long and grueling, but we said from the start that we would take the time necessary to get this right,” he said in a video message. “I am 100 percent comfortable with my family flying on it.”
The Max was grounded worldwide in March 2019 when the FAA joined regulators in dozens of other countries in banning the plane after the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed all 346 people on board.
Investigators have attributed the crashes to a range of problems, including engineering flaws, mismanagement, and a lack of federal oversight. At the root was software known as MCAS, which was designed to automatically push the plane’s nose down in certain situations and has been blamed for both crashes.
They didn't ell the pilots about the software that overrode their commands and caiused the crashes.
In a news conference Tuesday in anticipation of the FAA announcement, relatives of victims on the second plane that crashed, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, questioned whether Boeing had done enough to address safety concerns with the plane.
Well, we will soon find out, right?
In a letter to employees, Boeing’s chief executive, David Calhoun, welcomed the lifting of the ban, promising to proceed deliberately with the plane’s return to service and to “never forget” the victims of the crashes.
“We will honor them by holding close the hard lessons learned from this chapter in our history to ensure accidents like these never happen again,” he said.
Un-flipping-real!
They are murders because they knew of the problem and approved the plane anyway, with the FAA rubber-stamping the $elf-$erving report.
Now that the FAA has lifted its grounding order, regulators around the world are expected to follow suit, although some may take their time in wrapping up their own in-depth reviews. The agency has worked with its counterparts in Canada, the European Union, and Brazil on revised pilot training requirements for the Max.
Even in the United States, it could be months before the Max starts carrying passengers again. The FAA must still approve pilot training procedures for each US airline operating the Max, planes need to be updated, and airlines suffering from a huge decline in traffic during the pandemic may feel little urgency to act quickly. United Airlines said Wednesday that it expected to start flying the Max in the first quarter of next year.
The FAA decision removes some uncertainty as Boeing seeks to rehabilitate its reputation, start fulfilling longstanding orders for the Max, and manage the sharp slowdown in business caused by the pandemic.
It's all about image and perception!
The company has lost more than 1,000 orders this year, mostly for the Max, after accounting for orders that either were canceled or are likely to fall through. Aircraft contracts typically allow buyers to cancel or renegotiate terms if deliveries are delayed, adding to the urgency for Boeing to resume delivering the planes. Still, the company has more than 4,200 orders in its backlog, most of them for the Max.
The single-aisle plane is the latest in Boeing’s 737 line, an industry workhorse widely used by airlines around the world for short to intermediate distances.
For decades, Boeing had taken an incremental approach to the 737, choosing to update the plane rather than conceive a new model. That strategy had benefits, including reducing the need for costly pilot retraining, but it also resulted in a patchwork design that sometimes required workarounds. When larger, more efficient engines were added to the plane, they caused the Max to tilt up during certain maneuvers. MCAS — for maneuvering characteristics augmentation system — was programmed to counter that.
In both crashes, faulty sensors activated the software, sending the planes toward the ground as the pilots struggled to pull them back up. In a September report, Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said internal Boeing documents showed that concerns raised by employees about MCAS had been dismissed or insufficiently addressed. That report and one from the Transportation Department’s inspector general accused Boeing of misleading the FAA by playing down the complexity of MCAS, perhaps to avoid costly pilot training.....
Sure looks like criminal murder to me!
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Related:
Capacity will be limited amid the the continued threat of the virus as the industry is trying to recover after the pandemic forced ski areas to close early this spring, but roughly seven months after the coronavirus cut the ski season short at the height of spring break, ski resorts across the United States and Canada are slowly picking up the pieces and figuring out how to safely reopen this winter, and they are very optimistic and believe that tourism will be roaring back by summer -- as is the WHO:
"As several European countries have suspended access to the ski slopes to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief said the risk of COVID-19 while skiing is likely minimal. “I suspect many people won’t be infected barreling down the slopes on their skis,” said Dr. Michael Ryan at a WHO news briefing on Monday. The UN health agency has said the virus transmits much less readily outside because it is dispersed in the fresh air. Restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 have kept ski lifts closed in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. “The real issues are going to come at airports, tour buses taking people to and from ski resorts, ski lifts ... and places where people come together,” Ryan said."
These f**kers are incredible.
They still want to ski so they come up with this mountain of bullshit.
Also see:
"The World Health Organization chief is hailing the first weekly decline in global COVID-19 cases since September, citing the impact of measures mainly in hard-hit Europe and warning that “this is no time for complacency.” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the “welcome news” still should be taken with caution and warned that death counts were still rising across the world — and cases were still rising in other parts of the world outside of Europe. “This is no time for complacency, especially with holiday season approaching in many cultures and countries,” he said. Tedros, an Ethiopian who goes by his first name, urged people to be careful during the festive season and said COVID-19 will “change the way we celebrate, “but it doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate,” he added, asking people to assess whether they “really need to travel” and advising shoppers to visit stores during lower-traffic times or favor online shopping. He advised avoiding gatherings with many different households — or meeting outdoors, wearing masks, or keeping physical distance if such gatherings do occur."
Death counts are lower than last year and the year before, proving there is no pandemic despite what this contemptuous cretin says.
You can put your credit card away unless you are renting a room at the lodge before driving up to the slopes.
UPDATE:
Also see:
Exxon will fill it up with fuel before it implodes.
