31/05/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China announced on Sunday two new confirmed cases of coronavirus and four new asymptomatic cases, including one person without symptoms of COVID-19 on a chartered flight from Germany.
The two confirmed cases in Shandong province on Saturday compared with four cases the day before, data from the country’s health authority showed.
The National Health Commission (NHC) confirmed three new asymptomatic cases on Saturday.
On Sunday, the Chinese city of Tianjin confirmed one asymptomatic person, a passenger arriving from Frankfurt on a chartered Lufthansa flight, LH342, to Tianjin. This case was discovered between midnight and 6 a.m. local time on Sunday, the city’s daily statements show.
These charter flights are part of an accelerated entry procedure offered by Beijing as China and Germany seek to reignite their economies after months of lockdown. The flight to Tianjin carried about 200 passengers, mostly German business executives.
Lufthansa has another charter flight scheduled for Shanghai on Wednesday.
A 34-year-old German engineer tested positive for the coronavirus after arriving in Tianjin but he does not have any symptoms, the Tianjin government said on its official social media platform Weibo.
The asymptomatic patient has been transferred to a local hospital to be placed under medical observation, the Tianjin government said, adding that the whole process was a “closed loop”, meaning posing no great risk to the Chinese public.
Source: Reuters
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17/05/2020
- There has been strong demand for air freight services since April, when Chinese factories got back to work
- Cargo flights have become critical in moving protective health equipment across the globe
Planes of German air carrier Lufthansa at the country’s largest airport in Frankfurt. Photo: Reuters
German freight carrier Lufthansa Cargo is expanding in China, surpassing 100 weekly flights for the first time, and adding new flights to Shenzhen.
Peter Gerber, CEO of Europe’s largest cargo airline, said there had been heavy demand for its services, though this might cool by the peak of summer.
“At the moment, cargo demand is very, very strong,” he told the Post. “It started to get strong in April, when Chinese industries got back to work, and after that we have seen a constant, heavy demand, a real peak.”
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Global air freight capacity has been squeezed as two-thirds of the world’s aircraft have been grounded by the
Covid-19 pandemic.
The collapse of air travel has practically put a stop to passenger flights, which typically carry half of all air cargo.
Since the pandemic, cargo flights have been critical in moving protective health equipment across the globe. From sending masks and other supplies to China in February, the German carrier is now taking urgent supplies from the mainland back to Europe.
Peter Gerber says Lufthansa Cargo has a high responsibility in maintaining supply chains, for both global health and world trade. Photo: Handout
“We have a high responsibility in maintaining supply chains in these unprecedented times for both global health and world trade,” Gerber said.
With the addition of Shenzhen, Lufthansa Cargo will fly to five destinations in China. It serves more than 300 destinations in 100 countries.
The cargo carrier is part of the Lufthansa Group and coordinates all the freight that goes into the passenger planes of its sibling brands, including Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian.
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By next week, Lufthansa Cargo will be running more freight flights to China than the 72 passenger flights the group flew weekly before the pandemic to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Nanjing and Qingdao.
Lufthansa Cargo has a fleet of seven Boeing 777 Freighters (777Fs), with two new 777Fs arriving this year as part of its strategy to operate a fleet with a single aircraft type.
It also has six McDonnell Douglas-11Fs that Gerber said would still be retired as planned at the end of 2020, despite the extra demand for cargo capacity.
Its additional flights to China will make use of “preighters” – passenger aircraft flying cargo only. Gerber felt the trend of using empty passenger planes as “preighters” had peaked, pointing out that they cost the same to operate as freighters but carry only a fraction of the cargo.
Although he did not rule out future expansion, he said: “Demand will gradually come down in the next two or three months because a lot of equipment would have been shipped by then and some shipments will go on rail or ocean shipping.”
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He said some uncertainty remained over continued demand for airfreighted cargo, given the battered state of the world economy. Airlines would have to consider longer-term demand before deciding to invest more in cargo aircraft. “It depends how it looks beyond the next year,” he said.
Gerber said no decision had been taken yet on whether to convert some of the group’s orders for Boeing’s newest widebody 777X passenger aircraft into cargo planes.
He added that future plane orders would be balanced against the wider needs and spending decisions at Lufthansa Group, which is currently negotiating a government pandemic bailout package in the region of €9 billion (US$9.7 billion).
Source:SCMP
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30/01/2020
- Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Canada among several big name airlines to halt flights, while others reduce services
- Travel agents expecting slump in sales amid rising uncertainty over how epidemic will play out
Many airlines have cancelled flights into mainland China because of the coronavirus outbreak. Photo: AP
International air travellers and ticketing agents are in for a turbulent time in the weeks ahead as airlines around the world react to the
coronavirus epidemic by cancelling or limiting flights to and from the Chinese mainland.
Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Canada and Indonesia’s Lion Air have
, while United Airlines, American Airlines, IndiGo, Finnair, Delta Air Lines and Jetstar Asia have significantly reduced their services.
“It’s going to be pretty bad for travel agencies. We’ve had a lot of cancellations. Everyone is afraid of coming to China,” said Annabelle Auger from Travel Stone in Beijing.
“Many of our European clients are very worried because of the media coverage they’ve seen. Still, people are willing to wait and see for a few weeks to see how things go,” she said.
For foreigners looking to leave China, Auger said they should contact their embassy to find out about repatriation flights.
“The situation is very unclear, so it’s difficult to give any general recommendations,” she said.
Already this week, the embassies of the United States, Japan, South Korea and Britain have cleared flights to evacuate their nationals from Hubei, the central China province at the heart of the outbreak.
Auger said she and her colleagues had been busy rearranging flights for China-based foreigners who had gone away for the holidays.
“The schools are closed, so families with children abroad are thinking, ‘OK, let’s extend our stay for another week’,” she said.
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The Beijing government said on Monday it would extend the
Lunar New Year
holiday until Sunday to help stop the spread of the disease, while school breaks have also been extended.
Another travel agent in Beijing, who asked not to be named, said the virus outbreak had yet to have a significant impact on business but concerns were growing.
“We are a bit worried that things may get difficult in the coming months,” she said. “But we trust that the government is doing all it can and will take the appropriate measures to solve the problems.”
Zhu Tao, director of the flight standards department at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), said at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday that the relevant authorities were working closely with airlines to help Chinese nationals trapped overseas to get home.
The government had already chartered flights from Japan, Myanmar and South Korea to bring Chinese nationals back to Hubei, he said.
While all flights out of Hubei have been suspended since last week, Zhu said air transport was playing its part in fighting the disease.
As of Wednesday, the CAAC had sent 86 flights carrying 5,129 medical workers and 115,000 items of equipment and other supplies into Wuhan, he said.
Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said that efforts to prevent the coronavirus spreading outside the country had been successful, as only about 1 per cent of the confirmed infections were outside China.
Despite the flight cancellations, Beijing’s Capital International Airport was operating as normal on Thursday.
Andre Muchanga, a student from Abu Dhabi at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he made a late decision to fly home.
“I decided to buy my ticket last night,” he said. “At school, our dormitory is almost completely empty. I knocked on a friend’s door last night and found there was no one there, so I decided I better just go home and spend some time with my family.”
He said he decided not to buy a return flight as it he did not know when his classes would resume.
Signs at check-in counters reminded passengers who had travelled to Hubei or had a Hubei address to put themselves in isolation for 14 days.
While flights out of Hubei have been stopped, there was still plenty of inbound traffic.
“The number of domestic inbound travellers seems pretty normal for this time of year,” a man working on an information desk at Capital airport said.
“It’s the sixth day of the Lunar New Year. Lots of people have to return to work.”
An Air China employee, surnamed Hu, said that the airport had stepped up its disinfecting and general cleaning work. Body temperature checks had been installed at all access points and employees had been told to wear masks, he said.
“I don’t mind working during the Lunar New Year holiday,” he said. “I’m not afraid of the virus, I’m here to serve the people.”
SOurce: SCMP
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