"Paranoia, paranoia, everbody's coming to get me". These lyrics from Flagpole Sitta pretty much sum up the media and aviation. Swine flu is the latest thing to kick aviation when it's down. As if the global recession and last year's sky-high oil prices weren't enough..... and the media's loving it!
Remember Ebola? Remember SARS? Remember avian flu? All these things are still out there but the media got bored of them and therefore apparently they're no longer an issue. The same will happen to swine flu. It's worth bearing in mind that every year 36,000 people die in the US alone from the flu or flu-related illnesses. The WHO estimates that the global death rate from flu is somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 per annum. Does this stop people from flying on aircraft and visiting foreign countries? No, so why should this "H1N1" strain be any different really?
Spare a thought poor old Aeromexico, Mexicana and friends. A quick check of stock prices of airlines around the world reveals some alarming slumps over the past 7 days:
Air China -2.3%
Air France-KLM -3.9%
AMR Corp -8.5%
British Airways -10.9%
Cathay Pacific -3.3%
China Southern -9.8%
Copa -3.7%
Delta -21.5%
JetBlue -9.6%
Southwest -4.7%
UAL Corp -19.7%
US Airways -17.1%
Not pretty reading really. However, my greatest concern is where do US citizens go, now that Mexico is supposedly off-limits, when The Day After Tomorrow scenario happens?
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