From The Air Current today, and an unnamed “Middle Eastern airline”, who may or may not have deeper pockets to ride this out than many smaller European airlines. This has been the single most striking quote I’ve read on the subject.
“No bookings are coming in,” said a senior network planner at a major Middle Eastern airline on Sunday. “It’s just like 9/11, just that you can still fly. Effectively Asia is closed for us.” The commercial impact “only got bad in the last two days,” said a European airline executive on Saturday. “But it was a cliff.” One official at a U.S. airline said it was missing booking targets in the single-digit percentages last week and expected that to increase into the teens by the early days of this week.