Airlines to bring back thousands of workers to qualify for Covid relief cash

Air service requirements to smaller cities also reinstated

US airlines will get $15bn in additional federal aid to pay their workers under the $900bn coronavirus relief deal lawmakers agreed on Sunday, calling back to work staff who were furloughed earlier this year.

More than 32,000 airline workers were put on leave after $25bn set aside by the CARES Act in March to cover passenger airline payroll ran out on 30 September.

As that expired, labour unions and airlines urged lawmakers to approve additional aid, but Congress and the White House failed to agree on a new plan.

New support for the sector will keep airline workers on payroll until the end of March, and will retroactively pay them back to 1 December, according to Reuters.

In a message to employees, American Airlines said that it hoped to get checks out to employees by Christmas Eve.

In the interim, airlines have pushed workers to take early retirement or be bought out of contracts in an effort to shed staff and blunt losses.

The relief package also stipulates that air service requirements that lapsed at the end of September must resume.

Routes to smaller cities must once again be flown until at least 31 March. Many small airports saw service cut by the airlines as unsustainable in the current travel environment.

Airlines were believed to have requested an additional $10bn to match the help they received in March, but were left disappointed.

When the first aid package expired there had only been a small recovery in passenger numbers and since then there has been a decline in bookings as new cases of coronavirus have surged.

Air travel is currently less than half the level that it was a year ago based on security screened passenger numbers.

In addition to helping the airlines, the new stimulus bill includes $1bn for airline contractors, $2bn for airports and airport vendors, $14bn for transit, $10bn for state highways, $1bn for Amtrak, and $2bn for private bus, school bus and ferry companies.

News of the contents of the stimulus relief package comes amid calls to halt services to and from the UK due to the spread of the variant of the Covid-19 virus that is more easily transmissible.

British Airways and Delta Air Lines have agreed to only fly passengers to New York that can show a negative Covid-19 test ahead of flights departing from London Heathrow.