{"id":243468,"date":"2020-01-29T22:14:14","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T03:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=243468"},"modified":"2020-01-29T22:14:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T03:14:14","slug":"air-canada-suspends-all-direct-flights-to-china-as-coronavirus-spreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/01\/29\/air-canada-suspends-all-direct-flights-to-china-as-coronavirus-spreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Canada suspends all direct flights to China as coronavirus spreads"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
FILE: Air Canada’s domestic check-in facilities at Vancouver International Airport. (Photo by IDuke\/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MONTREAL \u2014 Air Canada is halting all direct flights to China following the federal government’s advisory to avoid non-essential travel to the country due to the coronavirus epidemic.<\/p>\n

The abrupt suspension \u2014 effective Thursday and slated to last until Feb. 29 \u2014 threatens to dent revenues as the airline scrambles to regroup amid the disruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely will have a commercial impact. There’s no doubt about it. China is a major market for Air Canada,\u201d said John Gradek, a lecturer at McGill University and head of its Global Aviation Leadership Program.<\/p>\n

Canada’s largest airline, the carrier makes 33 flights a week to Beijing and Shanghai from Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. The potential for longer-term harm looms if travel demand stays near ground level into the spring.<\/p>\n

More than 50 million people in 17 cities are now under under lockdown as China rolls out quarantine measures unprecedented in modern history.<\/p>\n

Air Canada said Wednesday it had begun to cancel select flights as customers delayed trips and called off travel plans due to fears of the spreading epidemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree or four hours later, everything shut down,\u201d Gradek said. \u201cIt kind of shows you the degree to which this is a very, very fluid situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Affected customers will be notified and offered options that include travel on other carriers where available, or a full refund, Air Canada said.<\/p>\n

The carrier is also waiving rebooking fees for flights that go through a partner airline to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, until March 29.<\/p>\n

Canada has looked increasingly to East Asia as a growth market, with the number of annual visitors to Canada from China shooting up by a factor of 10 since 2000 to 757,000 in 2018.<\/p>\n

Air Canada has seen its shares fall by about 10 per cent since authorities on Jan. 20 confirmed human-to-human transmission of the illness, which has caused 132 deaths and infected more than 6,000 people.<\/p>\n

The Montreal-based carrier said in a statement that it remains in consultation with the Public Health Agency of Canada, Transport Canada, and Global Affairs and will adjust its schedule as appropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cAir Canada regrets this situation and apologizes for the serious disruption to our customers’ travel plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines, which fly into Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, have not announced plans to halt flights to Canada.<\/p>\n

The novel coronavirus has killed 132 people and infected more than 6,000 on the Chinese mainland and abroad.<\/p>\n

Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says Canada has a plane preparing to fly Canadians out of the province in China at the centre of an outbreak of a new coronavirus.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2020.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 Air Canada is halting all direct flights to China following the federal government’s advisory to avoid non-essential travel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":243469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243470,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243468\/revisions\/243470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}