UK airline Flybe collapses amid virus crisis

LONDON — The struggling British airline Flybe collapsed Thursday amid drops in demand caused by the new coronavirus, leaving passengers stranded and threatening the viability of regional airports across the country.

Flybe’s fall highlights the damage that the virus outbreak has had on the airline industry, which has cut back on flights around the world as people avoid flying out of precaution.

The British regional airline narrowly avoided bankruptcy in January but had continued to lose money. Unions and opposition politicians attacked both the airline’s owners and Prime Minister Boris

Johnson’s government for failing to act to save it.

“We’re all a bit gutted — Flybe is a household name, we’ve been flying with them for 40 years and we really tried to do everything we could back at the turn of the year,” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News.

Shapps said that for “an already weak company,” the virus made survival impossible.

The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority urged customers to make “their own alternative travel arrangements.

Airlines have struggled after a spike in new coronavirus cases were reported in Italy, South Korea and Iran, spooking holidaymakers and sparking the cancellation of business trips.

The International Air Transport Association said January saw the slowest monthly year-over-year growth since April 2010 — and that was before the main impact of the virus outbreak. United Airlines said it will freeze hiring and ask employees to volunteer for unpaid leave as it struggles with weak demand. Finnair is enforcing temporary layoffs for some 6,000 staff.

The disruption is having the biggest effect on companies that were perceived as already weak financially. Norwegian Air Shuttle, which has struggled to maintain the costs of operating a low-budget business model on long-haul trans-Atlantic flights, has seen its shares slide 55% since the start of the virus outbreak, including a 12% drop Thursday.