A few weeks ago American Airlines suspended all flights to Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, through late April. They're now extended suspensions to one of their two remaining destinations in Asia. It has today been announced that American Airlines will be suspending their route between Dallas and Seoul Incheon between March 4 and April 24,…
Continue reading: American Airlines Suspends Seoul Flights
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The suspension of Delta's MSP-ICN also cancelled/pushed back the launch of ICN-MNL to May 1. We had a lot of business travel booked on this route in April, now scrambling for alternatives.
American currently has two daily 777-200 flights to Narita. I believe one was supposed to stay and the other changed to Haneda onto a 777-300ER. Is the remaining NRT flight just canceled because of the virus or was it supposed to go anyway? I know JAL also has a daily 787 flight, all of which end up packed.
I love how airlines continue to fly to South Korea which is a small country, while they all rushed out of China, where the virus was thousands of miles from Beijing where the US big 3 fly.
In addition to suspending MSP-ICN, Delta has reduced weekly frequencies to less than daily from ATL, DTW and SEA as well to ICN. Worth mentioning.
I give credit to american for noting that this is all about a reduction in demand rather than mushy "safety concerns" that have no scientific basis.
Lucky,
Are you still going to Kyoto? Have a similar trip planned for the PH Tokyo and Kyoto in early June (even got a tsu applied in Kyoto). Along with that and the ANA F flights, I’m starting to get depressed that I may have to cancel.
@Andy 11235
I’d bet the spinmeisters from the airlines contemplated going with the “we’re doing this for your safety line”, but decided they could get away with it. And it’s right: they would have been crucified. So we get the truth. We can handle the truth, even when it’s a PITA.
@Lisfranc I have a similar trip to Kyoto for the cherry blossom in late March. I already cancelled it.
Sorry, but canceling a cherry blossom trip over coronavirus is insane. This will be literally the best year ever to see the sakura! No crowds!
Yes, do get your full dose of Coronavirus in japan, which is up next for the outbreak, while enjoying your flowers.
And don't forget to get your side dose of fukushima radiation while eating contaminated food offered exclusively for the tourists at convenience stores and restaurants.
Thailand is up next for Coronavirus. They are under reporting case numbers by 30x. Source: a thai doctor
Then you’ll see Malaysia go.
are airlines even allowed to reduce or suspend flights to Haneda though? Wouldn’t it make the airline lose their slot?
@Sharon Hello, Chinese person, it's because Korea's infection numbers are credible whereas China's are not.
Incheon airport is also a hub, partly because people of many nationalities, including of the US, can enter the Korea visa-free, which is sort of a no-brainer requirement for US airlines wanting to set up a hub somewhere.
How long until they reduce frequencies to SEA?
And then the other US cities that will see cases of the virus? Pretty soon air travel will grind to a halt.
How are we not seeing that a place like NY might already have tons of undetected cases? I wouldn't be surprised that once US starts testing widely, we'll end up being the most infected country in the world (besides China of course). Just because we are big and well, uncontrollable (it's not a political comment - I simply can't imagine New Yorkers voluntarily locking themselves up in their own apartments for 14 days like Singapore citizens do - also for financial reasons). Then travel bans will be imposed against US tourists and all our comments will be about forced rather than elective trip cancellations.
We had our DFW-SEOUL flight cancelled yesterday without an email or call from American. We ended up calling AA and having the whole itinerary refunded as we were supposed to have a layover in Seoul and fly to Japan, but since the flight to Seoul disappeared and AA didn’t rebook is, we just chose to play it safe and cancel the complete Asia trip. Now the question is whether hotels will refund us. As a side note, we tried to cancel the flight the day before AA suspended the Seoul flights, and they told us we would be charged all fees...
Can people fly to Japan and take another flight from Japan to Seoul? If so, are those people allowed to come back to US?
My flight leaves for Osaka/Kyoto in a week, and unless I need to stay here for crisis management at work, I'm going. COVID-19 or no. Just disappointed I won't get to use my sumo tickets...