Wow: British Airways Suspends All Mainland China Flights

The cancellation of flights were due to a combination of factors. Once the government advised against all but essential travel the writing was on the wall for flights to mainland China (Virgin have now suspended flights too) A duty of care for the flight and cabin crew - many did not want to travel to China in the first instance and were naturally worried, Once in China - most shops and restaurants were closed. The hotels are closing restaurants and some places having food shortages - you can’t keep crews locked in a hotel without access to any food etc. Many aspects of public transport are closed down, the streets are deserted even in Shanghai and Beijing so it’s harder for crew to move around, so again restricted to just a hotel. The downtime has added bonuses of being able to assist with the 787 issues, and allow unscheduled pre summer maintenance which wasn’t in the plan originally.

@Lucky Not just UA and AA, but DL is also cutting China routes. Check your sources for any blanket ban coming up, I'm wondering about that too.

@Lucky The difference is surely that the U.K. government has advised against all but “essential” travel to anywhere in mainland China, whereas your own government hasn’t. Therefore BA now has specific legal obligations including for the health & safety of its own staff. Cancelling all flights for a few days until a clearer picture emerges seems eminently sensible, doesn’t it?

@The nice Paul What some of us are sneering about is people's mistaken impression that the flu pandemic is well in hand and completely managed -- zen calm -- while at the some time they are completely losing their minds with fear about the as-yet comparatively mild spread of coronavirus. Or the belief that because SARS was a coronavirus and Wuhan is a coronavirus, that Wuhan should be mentioned in the same breath as SARS (common cold is also often coronavirus.) Some of the reaction seems a combination of ignorance and latent racism. I'll hasten to add that you don't seem prone to that same degree of excess. My tendency is to look at the facts of what the disease is actually doing right now, and rely on that observation versus speculations about what might could happen once zombies start popping out of the ground. That all said Wuhan coronavirus is a threat of unknown dimensions, and if it can be contained, that's better than ending up with influenza 2.0. China and others are doing the right thing by trying to bottle it up and attack it with what science we have. I just think it is useful to keep the risks that we understand in perspective, and not completely lose our heads. As yet, Wuhan is a comparatively minor health threat versus ongoing pandemics in our midst.

@ Kendor “nor did she advise me to run around hysterically indulging paranoia, hysteria, and tinfoil conspiracy theories” I’m pretty sure neither Bill nor I have advised anyone to do that. Your point about not knowing the infection rate is of course true — just as we don’t know the actual infection rates for flu, colds, or pretty much anything else. So public health experts have developed ways of estimating. These are by definition estimates, and they may ultimately be way off base (the infectiousness of Ebola was strikingly over-estimated, as was the spread of AIDS), but they’re the best tools we have. The alternative — on display by sone commenters on here — is a faith-based response, usually sneering, always along the lines of “I don’t know anything but I’m sure it’s not as bad as anyone says”. Just like Brexiteers in my own country don’t *know* what will happen after Brexit, but are still absolutely certain they’re right. With stuff like the Coronavirus it seems to me a bit of short-term over-caution is a better response than gambling it’ll be ok (even if the latter is statistically more likely).