Hong Kong, March 16 -- Little more than two months ago, the Asia-Pacific airline industry was looking at the beginning of 2020 with measured optimism. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) was predicting another 12 months of improved profitability and airline chiefs in the region were buoyed by an easing in trade war tensions between the U.S. and China, a key to improvement in the struggling and important air freight sector.
But that optimism has been dashed as the region's largest aviation market, China, reels from the impact of the Novel Coronavirus epidemic, or COVID-19, on commercial airline business. It is now clear the epidemic is worse than the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in 2003.
There have been ...