This is confirmed, but it hasn't been specified which airports yet. I would imagine YYZ / YUL & YVR with a possibility of YYC.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/corona...neau-1.4852002

The 3 or 4 majors would be my guess as well.

An internal Westjet memo has been obtained by the Canadian Press... memo is warning staff to brace for up to/or greater than 50% layoffs as customers are cancelling and/or rebooking in massive numbers. Their call centre has been overwhelmed today.

Route/capacity reduction was anticipated to be ~12% a few days ago - now, after recent events like the US EU travel ban, it will be a far greater number than that.

Developing...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busi...e-to-covid-19/

Well, you can kiss bye bye to the WS B763s and I would say even the B736s.

AC will be doing much of the same. The mainline B763s will most likely leave the fleet ASAP, as will some of the older A320s and all E190s. They might even cancel some upcoming A330 leases.

Depends on how long things last. The number of new cases in China is slowing to a trickle: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. The rest of the world is probably lagging China by six weeks. 1/2 the fleet grounded for a couple of months seems realistic, but when things rebound they'll need the frames again. I would imagine it'll take a full year to fully recover though just like it did with SARS.

It's easy for WestJet to park the 13 736s for a few weeks as they're all owned, but given the tumbling loads, might make more sense to park 738s.

When things start to rebound, the MAX will still be months away from re-entering service (i.e. late 2020).

A couple of thoughts.

1. It will be curious to see where all these grounded aircraft will be parked. There's only so many places in Arizona and most of the parking is used up by the 737 Max i assume. I guess YMX, YWG, YEG might get some parked planes as the weather improves.

2. If China is restarting business/travel etc. then hopefully we can do the same here with a March/April hit and then some improvements in May and so on.

3. What a time frame for ACMI operators. They were probably bringing in Brinks trucks of money with leases as a result of the 737 Max debacle. Now their aircraft will probably be parked throughout the summer doing nothing.

Everything will be stopped until we find a vaccine.

Jeez!

Why?

China has already resumed many domestic flights.

Within their own country. They could be hit with a 2nd wave of cases if they bring in people from Europe or North America. We don't have a vaccine yet, a 2nd wave is still very possible.

That sounds about right. The loads have been horrible the last few days as the world panics in a toilet paper frenzy.

The last YYZ-FCO had 8 pax on board a 298 seater 787-9.

^ That's wild!

Hope everyone was upgraded!

I have never understood what this word means. Can someone give a brief explanation?

It’s an abbreviation for “passengers” commonly used throughout the travel industry.

He’s saying there were only & passengers on the flight to Rome.

Chinese border has a mandatory 14 day quarantine (police monitored kinda like probation) for everybody entering the country.

With fewer than 15000 active cases, with some certainty that they haven't missed any cases, and strong border controls; China will likely be in full swing in another week or 2.

I highly doubt China only had 80,000 cases to begin with. That number is too good to be true. And it starts with an 8.....hmmm......

On another note, our government announced limiting intl flights to certain airports, but no airports listed so far? What a joke. Doing press releases is nice and all, but they need to follow through with proper actions. One of which is to list the goddamn airports on that list, and start putting measures in place to make sure return passengers are assessed.

That last flight from FCO landed in YUL the other day, and not a single public health worker met the passengers to question them.

There will be thousands of snowbirds returning from the US in the coming days/weeks (btw, the US probably has over 100,000 actual cases right now), and they will all be allowed to simply walk into our country, carrying COVID, having simply been told to voluntarily self isolate.

That's a joke of a strategy.

Yeah, no shit. People that had 2 weeks leave to go to the States now can’t afford to go for that time, what with the obligatory 2 week quarantine when they get back. Next stop: Cancellation central!!! Transborder and international will take massive hits (50%+) and domestic will also take a significant hit (25%+).

I’m curious to see how many empty seats there will be on my flight(s) to YOW in a few days, and that’s just domestic. :yes:

It is a joke of a strategy and a reflection on the Federal government and its bad leadership. Legault asked Trudeau twice to close borders to the tourists, and there's a wishy washy response. Have flights for the next two days for those who want to quit/come back and close the borders.

You would expect Canada and the US to have relatively the same number of cases as a percentage of GDP. Well that is the case.

The Legault position (like the Trump position) looks to be driven by gut instinct. The Trudeau position looks to be driven by scientific evidence. In both cases the outcome looks to be the same. I am not certain I would be critical of either one.