Emirates Airline concerned about new Trump travel order

BERLIN // Booking rates on flights to the United States fell by 35 per cent following president Donald Trump’s travel ban, the chief executive of Emirates airline has said.

At the ITB travel fair in Berlin, Tim Clark said he was concerned that the latest travel ban will deter Muslim visitors to America.

“I am concerned. It’s the tone of it. We have brought millions of Muslims to the United States, but now they may not feel welcome, they may look at going on holiday elsewhere,” Mr Clark said.

Mr Trump signed an executive order on Monday that takes effect on March 16, keeping a 90-day ban on travel to the US by citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

However, the order applies only to new visa applicants, meaning about 60,000 people whose visas were revoked by the previous order will now be permitted to enter. It also removed Iraq from the list.

Emirates, which flies to 11 US cities, has not fully recovered from the original January 27 travel ban, suspended on February 3.

“The effect it had was instantaneous,” Mr Clark said.

He said the revised order issued this week offered more clarity, and there had been some positive movement in bookings on the Emirates network but not a full recovery.

The 35 per cent fall referred to booking rates and velocity of growth, not actual numbers, an Emirates spokesman said.

“When will it recapture the original booking curve is anyone’s guess,” Mr Clark said, adding that he hoped for an improvement in the summer after the usually quiet period during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

However, the new order will not have as drastic a change in travel to US as seen in January, according to an aviation expert.

“The sudden drop in bookings at Emirates was not a surprise. The decision by the Trump administration to restrict travel access for persons of specific nations meant that passengers suddenly re-thought their travel plans,” Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at StrategicAero Research, said.

“This was more knee-jerk as opposed to a long-term trend – particularly as neither Emirates or its other Gulf peers have reduced capacity of flights to the US since late January,” he said.

“Even with the new executive order, there’s likely to be further legal challenges so I don’t see things changing as drastically as they did in January.”

Akbar Al Baker, chief executive of Qatar Airways, said on Wednesday his airline had not seen a drop in demand for US flights.

“I make sure that when I deploy my planes, they are full, that the passengers are allowed to go into and out of a country,” he said.

Demand for travel to the US over the coming months has flattened, with flights to and from the Middle East the hardest hit, a study released by travel analysis company ForwardKeys showed on Monday.

Total international net bookings fell by 4 per cent during the nine days after news of the new travel ban, the study stated, while forward bookings from the Middle East to the US for the next three months have dropped by 9.9 per cent, as compared to the same time last year.

Bookings for international travel departing from the US were also negatively impacted following the announcement of the travel ban.

Bookings for round-trips to the Middle East and South Asia plummeted during the four weeks following the ban, including the UAE, which saw a drop of 19 per cent.

Major destinations in the Middle East and South Asia, including Muslim-majority countries, are set to suffer a significant drop in visitors, according to the study.

Since imposition of the travel ban, Middle East markets have been the worst affected, with bookings for departure in the next three months falling 25.4 per cent behind the equivalent time last year.

mmannan@thenational.ae

*With reporting from Reuters