International air travel will seemingly remain sluggish in the near term as uncertainties over the omicron Covid variant linger, in accordance to an aviation analyst.
Brendan Sobie, impartial analyst at Sobie Aviation, stated omicron has hit passenger confidence in “travel right now because things are changing every day.”
“The recovery we were hoping we were going to have continuing into the first half of next year, its just not going to happen. That’s going to be a setback,” Sobie informed CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday. “Because we don’t know too much about this variant and we don’t know what’s around the corner.”
While a lot stays unknown about omicron, the World Health Organization warned that the variant is spreading “significantly faster” than the delta strain and could change the course of the pandemic.
The extremely infectious variant has now been detected in no less than 89 nations and forced some governments to impose stricter containment measures in the course of the vacation season.
Singapore freezes new quarantine-free ticket gross sales
On Wednesday, Singapore stated it could freeze new ticket sales for quarantine-free travel in an effort to restrict the variety of imported omicron instances.
Singapore’s vaccinated travel lane program was key in the nation’s pivot to a “living with Covid” technique and the most recent transfer offers a big blow to that effort. Shares of Singapore’s travel shares reminiscent of Singapore Airlines fell Wednesday following the announcement.
“Singapore Airlines is going to be impacted by the setback on the VTLs,” famous Sobie, including the transfer will additional cut back its load issue, or the % of seats crammed.
He added issues will not be transferring in the best course for Asia-Pacific airways, which is “very disappointing.”
“It’s been such a difficult year for Asia-Pacific carriers — much worse than expected,” Sobie famous.
“Things looked like they were starting to get better. Now, unfortunately, its just going in the opposite direction.”
