Virgin Atlantic will launch flights to Barbados and Orlando from Edinburgh as part of wider capacity growth to the region.
The UK carrier says it will operate twice-weekly flights from Edinburgh to Barbados from 5 December. Virgin Atlantic says the route represents its first international flights from the Scottish capital in the carrier's 37-year history and will be Scotland’s only direct service to the Caribbean. Twice-weekly flights from Edinburgh to Orlando are scheduled to begin in April 2022. The two routes will be operated with Airbus A330's. A new thrice-weekly seasonal service from Manchester to Montego Bay in Jamaica will commence on 6 November, using A330's too. From London Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic will start twice-weekly flights to the Bahamas on 20 November, and thrice-weekly services to St Lucia on 18 December. The two routes will be operated with Boeing 787-9's and A330's, respectively. Frequencies will be increased on existing routes to Barbados and Jamaica from Heathrow, and to Barbados from Manchester. In addition to its Caribbean expansion, Virgin Atlantic says it will increase capacity on routes to Mumbai and Hong Kong in August and September, respectively.

The pace of bookings for Southwest Airlines flights has "recently" begun decelerating while the pace of trip cancellations accelerates as rising Covid-19 case counts appear to be taking their toll on travel demand in the USA. The Dallas-based airline states in updated financial guidance disclosed on 11 August that it believes the recent rise in Covid-19 cases associated with the delta variant is driving the decelerating close-in bookings and accelerating close-in trip cancellations it is seeing in August. Southwest expects the infection rate will continue to "remain elevated" in the near term and has consequently dimmed the outlook for the third quarter that it had disclosed in its second-quarter earnings statement and investor call on 22 July. "[Our] current outlook for third quarter 2021 operating revenues has worsened by an estimated three to four points from its previous outlook three weeks ago, compared with third quarter 2019," Southwest says. The carrier had previously estimated that its operating revenue in August would be down 12-17%, compared with the same month in 2019. Southwest now expects revenue in August will be down 15-20%. "We believe there will be a bulk of airline guidance updates in September, given the airlines will have had enough time to measure the impact of rising Covid-19 infections and reassess demand across all segments," Cowen analyst Helane Becker writes in an 11 August research note. US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control data shows that the rate of new cases of Covid-19 in the USA had fallen to a post-March 2020 low of 32 per million population (seven-day average) on 21 June, from a high of 754 on 13 January, but has been on the rise, driven largely by the delta variant. For the two weeks ended 31 July, 83% of Americans with new cases of Covid-19 had been infected by the delta variant, up from 27% for the two weeks ended 19 June. The daily number of new Covid-19 infections per million population in the USA rose from 36 on 19 June to 281 on 8 August. The rate of new deaths from Covid-19 in the USA began inching up during the second week in July after having declined consistently since mid-January 2021.

Malaysia has begun to ease restrictions on domestic and international travel for fully vaccinated travellers, which could allow some air travel to return. Prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced the new measures, which are to take effect from 10 August, in a televised address on 8 August. Vaccinated citizens and permanent residents entering Malaysia will be allowed to complete their 14-day quarantine at home, regardless of their state of residence, according to a 10 August update by the Malaysia's National Security Council. Cross-district travel within states has also been allowed in nine states and territories, as part of Malaysia's four-phase plan to reopen the country. Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Perak, Penang and Sabah have been classified under "phase two" while Perlis, Sarawak and the federal territory of Labuan have moved on to "phase three". Data shows that Malaysian carriers flew over 80,000 domestic flights to these nine states and territories in 2019, representing about 40% of the country's total domestic flights. Malaysia has also granted permission for inter-district and interstate travel to enable spouses as well as parents and children under the age of 18 who are living apart to meet. In line with this, flag carrier Malaysia Airlines has offered flight bookings from 10 August to 30 September, for travel until 30 October. The move comes days after Malaysia's daily Covid-19 case count surged to new highs, exceeding 20,000 cases for the first time on 5 August and nearly 20,900 cases on 6 August, according to data from the health ministry. As of 9 August, Malaysia has vaccinated nine million people, about 39% of its total population.