An Air China 777 aircraft at New York’s JFK Airport
It’s notable that one area of the economy has not yet recovered from the pandemic, air travel between the United States and China.
The number of U.S.-China direct flights remains infinitesimal compared to what it was prior to the start of 2020. In the first four months of the year, the number of flights between the two superpowers was down 73% from the same period in 2019, according to Cirium, a company that tracks flight data.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Transportation increased by 50% the number of flights Chinese airlines could operate to the United States, a jump from eight per week to 12.
Granted this is an improvement from the time when airlines were not at all permitted to fly or permitted just one flight each.
Travel in and out of China began to become severely restricted as the scope of the spread of the novel coronavirus became better understood. Beijing, however, kept borders tightly sealed for several years and imposed weeks-long quarantine requirements on the few who entered.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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