Hong Kong, March 16 -- As the coronavirus, COVID-19, spreads globally, battering airlines in the process, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has taken the unusual step of asking global regulators to immediately suspend the rules of airport slot allocation for the entire 2020 cycle.
The importance of the campaign became clear at press time when the airline association upgraded its worst case scenario estimate of losses at the world's airlines from COVID-19 at US$113 billion. Asia-Pacific carriers would suffer almost 50% of the figure in contracted revenues of $57.3 billion, IATA predicted.
"IATA research has shown traffic has collapsed on key Asian routes. This is rippling through the air transport network globally even bet...