The spread of the coronavirus has seen multiple airlines suspending flights into China’s mainland to do their part in the reduction of it spreading. Some of those suspensions have even extended to include territories outside the mainland and include Macau and Hong Kong.
Now the majority of foreign airlines have stopped flying into the mainland, they are concentrating on where the virus is spreading such as Iran to determine which other routes will need to see a suspension temporarily. This is affecting routes between foreign counties and the United States. Hawaiian Airlines and Delta are the first US-flagged carriers to suspend other routes that are not connected to the Chinese mainland, and some are now looking at cutting some routes into the U.S.
Delta Air Lines
This week Delta announced it would stop flying the international route between Seoul and Minneapolis until the end of April. This move came on after a large increase in the number of reported cases in South Korea infected with the coronavirus. In addition to Delta, many other international carriers suspected service even though Delta is still flying to Seoul from other gateways in the U.S such as Detroit, Seattle and Atlanta but will reduce those flights to five a week through to the end of April. Delta had also planned on adding new routes between the Philippines, Manilla and Seoul but have postponed this until May.
Hawaiian Airlines
Hawaiian Airlines is the second major carrier in the U.S to suspend services to Asia based on the coronavirus spreading outside of China. This saw the airline stopping its Honolulu-Seoul until the end of April. The route is the second most popular with many of Korea’s airlines competing for passengers.
Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines has announced it is reducing the number of flights to several U.S destinations as part of a wide airline reduction to assist in the reduction of spreading the coronavirus and due to the reduction in people flying to Asia. Included within the routes impacted, include Singapore to San Francisco, Singapore to New York via Frankfurt, Singapore to Los Angeles, Singapore to Seattle and Hong Kong to San Francisco.
