Airlines will be hit hard by coronavirus

STOCKMARKETS IN China fell by nearly 8% on February 3rd—the largest single-day fall since 2015—as fears about the economic impact of the Wuhan coronavirus increased. Of the industries affected by the epidemic, perhaps none will be hit as hard as travel. In recent weeks, hotel occupancy in China has fallen by 45% year-on-year, according to analysts at Citigroup, a bank. Shares in China’s three biggest airlines—Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines—have fallen by more than 20% since the first person died from the new strain, known as 2019-nCoV, on January 9th. The death toll in China has risen to 361. And the first death from the strain has been reported abroad, in the Philippines.

Investors in Chinese aviation are right to be nervous. Some previous pandemics have caused huge drops in airline traffic. From peak to trough, Asian airlines’ monthly passenger numbers dropped by 35% after the SARS outbreak in 2003; for Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flag carrier, traffic fell by nearly 80%. The impact on some airlines of the Ebola outbreak, which started in West Africa in 2014, was still more severe. International air-passenger arrivals in Sierra Leone, for instance, plunged by 93%.