Unfortunately for the travel sector (and all of us personally), Omicron put a dampener on the travel revival. Now even continued holiday travels are in doubt.
Almost overnight, travel restrictions were tightened or re-introduced, just as air travel, and airlines’ balance sheets, were getting back to normal. Many of those restrictions targeted South Africa (and its neighbors) which was the first country to detect and then report the variant to the WHO, although many other countries — 19 to be exact — have now reported cases of the variant.
International travelers, and government authorities around the world, are questioning airlines’ insistence that sitting in a plane is not an increased risk.
It might be 2022, or probably even beyond, until air travel is fully feeling itself again.