FRIDAY, JULY 31 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
the coronavirus pandemic
seen is a sustained depression in
demand.”
After 9/11, a irlines received
$15 billion in bailout funds,
$5 billion in grants and $10 bil-
lion in loans. But unlike in the
Cares Act, the money was not
earmarked for employee salaries.
Mindful of that, unions pushed in
March to ensure the money
would go directly to front-line
workers.
For flight attendants, particu-
larly those who lived through
9/11, the pandemic has brought
levels of anxiety many never
thought possible. Those who have
taken unpaid leaves find them-
selves worried about paying their
bills, while those who have con-
tinued to fly worry about getting
infected with the novel coronavi-
rus, union leaders say.
“It’s so uncertain,” said Lyn
Montgomery, president of TWU
Local 556, which represents more
than 17,000 Southwest flight at-
tendants.
The airline said recently that
enough workers have taken vol-
untary unpaid leaves of absence
or opted to leave the company
altogether that it will not fur-
lough workers come Oct. 1.
Montgomery said that while
the airline is better placed than
most, “this is really unknown
territory and that’s why we’ve
been pushing for a second round
of the Cares Act.”
While unions have made their
push, airline leaders have taken a
low-key approach, in contrast totheir stance in the spring. Back
then, Airlines For America, a
group representing the biggest
airlines, came forward to call for a
$50 billion package.
Doug Parker, c hief executive of
American, said last week that the
initial aid was needed to keep
airlines in business but that the
situation today is different.
More aid is “not something the
airlines need as a means of keep-
ing us solvent anymore, because
we’ve all solved that problem, but
certainly something we support
because we support our team,” he
said in an appearance on CNBC.
To the unions, the second
round of payroll support is less
about the airlines and more about
the thousands of employees at
risk of losing their jobs without
an extension.
In a letter sent this week to
House and Senate leaders, a bi-
partisan group of more than 220
House members voiced support
for extending the program
through the end of March, saying
it would “ensure the U.S. airline
system remains viable as a na-
tional security asset and engine of
economic recovery once the pan-
demic is finally behind us.”
“Without further relief from
Congress, mass layoffs among air-
line industry workers are inevi-
table — and their magnitude will
eclipse those of any furloughs the
industry has ever seen,” they
wrote.
[email protected]
[email protected]BY IAN DUNCAN
AND LORI ARATANIAs tens of thousands of work-
ers in the airline industry stare
down job losses starting Oct. 1,
union leaders — with some sup-
port from company bosses — are
pushing Congress to extend a
multibillion-dollar federal aid
program as part of the next coro-
navirus relief package.
A coalition of 13 labor groups
said this week that an extension
of a $25 billion payroll support
program through March would
keep workers in an industry that
has been pummeled off the un-
employment lines and ensure
they can quickly return to their
jobs once more people are ready
to fly.
Failing to act, the unions said,
could lead to mass layoffs, “caus-
ing potentially catastrophic con-
sequences to this industry and
our broader economy.”
Airline leaders were vocal in
their push for the payroll pro-
gram and a further $25 billion in
loans in the spring when air travel
almost collapsed. Now, with their
companies no longer fighting for
survival, they say they support
the idea of an extension but em-
phasize that it’s the unions taking
the lead in the campaign.
This week, more than 200
members of the House — Demo-
crats and a few Republicans —
signed a letter backing the pro-
posal, but the prospects for final-
izing a deal remain unclear. Dem-
ocrats passed a new relief bill in
May, when it looked like demand
for air travel might recover quick-
ly, and did not include more help
for airlines. A bill unveiled by
Republican leaders in the Senate
this week proposes more help for
airports but not airlines.
While the economy as whole
has suffered and the highest-pro-
file debate over the next aid bill
has been on extending a $
boost in unemployment benefits,
the transportation sector contin-
ues to feel the effects of the
pandemic acutely and is looking
for another infusion of financial
help. Transit agencies are seeking
some $32 billion in aid. The state
transportation departments re-
sponsible for building roads and
bridges say they need $50 billion.
Aviation has been among the
industries hit hardest as the virus
has spread. The March aid bill,
known as the Cares Act, singled
out airlines for relief but imposed
conditions on companies accept-
ing money. Among them was a
promise to not lay off employees
until Oct. 1. The date seemed far
off and likely to fall a mid a recov-
ery in passenger demand, but
now the provision has set up the
potential for dramatic job losses.The rapid recovery airlines
hoped for has stalled in recent
weeks as coronavirus cases have
soared and states have begun
imposing quarantines on some
out-of-state visitors.
On average, the Transportation
Security Administration says it is
screening about 660,000 people a
day, a figure that has barely
budged since early in the month
and is down from 2.6 million at
the same point last year.
According to the International
Air Transport Association,
7.5 million flights have been can-
celed worldwide between Janu-
ary and July. Carriers are expect-
ed to lose $419 billion in revenue
in 2020. Some analysts are now
saying travel may not return to
pre-pandemic levels until 2023 or
2024.
“The second quarter of 2020
was historic for the airline indus-
try for all the wrong reasons,”
Scott Kirby, chief executive of
United Airlines, said during a
recent earnings call. “At the be-
ginning of April, we saw the
sharpest, deepest drop in de-
mand in history, far worse than
9/11 or the Great Recession or any
other stress test scenario that
anyone had modeled.”
The result is that the once-far-
off Oct. 1 date is approaching and
airlines are still reeling. Ameri-
can and United have issued for-mal notices saying they’re pre-
pared to lay off as many as 61,
employees. On Thursday, United
told its pilots that it was now
anticipating furloughing as many
as a third of them — 3,900 — up
from a previous estimate of 2,250.
Even without mass involun-
tary furloughs, there are clear
signs the industry will be smaller.
Ed Bastian, chief executive of
Delta Air Lines, said 17,000 em-
ployees — roughly 20 percent of
the carrier’s workforce — have
opted to leave the company.
American is trimming the ranks
of its management and adminis-
trative ranks by 5,000 workers.
Experts say the job losses from
the pandemic will far eclipse
those lost in the months after the
9/11 a ttacks. According to a report
by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
more than 125,000 workers lost
their jobs in the first 18 weeks
after the attacks. The biggest
share — 42 percent, or more than
44,000 — worked in the sched-
uled air transportation industry.
Aviation analyst Henry H.
Harteveldt said the effect of the
pandemic has been unprecedent-
ed and “absolutely destroyed de-
mand for air travel.”
“There have been declines, but
a certain amount of travel always
continued, even during the
depths of the recession,” Harte-
veldt said. “What we’ve neverAs airline layoffs loom, u nions seek aid extension
BY CAROLYN Y. JOHNSONPresident Trump issued a na-
tional call to action Thursday,
exhorting people who have recov-
ered from covid-19 to donate
blood plasma to help others fight
the disease and boost the nation’s
supply.
“If you’ve had the virus, if you
donate, it would be a terrific
thing,” Trump said on a visit to
the American Red Cross’s head-
quarters. “We really need dona-
tions of the plasma. To those that
have had the virus, you’ve gotten
through this. And I guess that
means you have something very
special there.”
The call for donors is based on
a simple, but powerful fact about
the immune system. People who
recover from a coronavirus infec-
tion typically have virus-blocking
antibodies circulating in their
blood in the weeks after they
recover. Those antibodies can be
harvested in plasma donations
and transfused to the next people
who get sick, helping boost their
immune systems. In contrast, de-
veloping treatments for a new
virus is an uncertain and time-
consuming process.
Blood plasma from people who
have successfully recovered from
coronavirus infection has been
widely used in the United States,
even though researchers are still
gathering evidence to definitively
show it works. About 50,
people have been transfused with
the treatment, called convales-
cent plasma, under an expanded
access program sponsored by the
Food and Drug Administration.
“The way Americans are doing
this is truly inspiring,” said Fran-
cis Collins, director of the Nation-
al Institutes of Health. “Ameri-
cans seem to believe that biblical
verse, ‘To whom much has been
given, much will be required.’ To
whom coronavirus has been giv-en and they’ve recovered, appar-
ently they have realized they have
something they can do to help the
next person.”
Antibody tests that detect
whether people have coronavi-
rus-fighting antibodies will be
included free to all blood donors.
Convalescent plasma is an ap-
proach that has been used
against measles, respiratory dis-eases and, more recently, Ebola.
But the historical data showing
that it works has been relatively
mixed, with some evidence sug-
gesting strongly that it works and
other studies showing it has little
effect.
“This is an idea that goes back
almost a century, but what’s hap-
pened — in the past, anyway — is
that it seems that people don’tthink about convalescent plasma
until the viral epidemic is up and
running — and then by the time
they get the clinical trial set up,
there’s not a need anymore,” said
Kevin Schulman, a professor of
medicine at Stanford University
School of Medicine who is work-
ing on one of the clinical trials.
Severely sick, hospitalized pa-
tients in the United States have
been receiving convalescent plas-
ma as a treatment since March.
The data so far indicate the
treatment is safe and shows en-
couraging signs of working, par-
ticularly if given very early in the
course of disease, but scientists
are starting up large clinical trials
to rigorously measure its effects,
backed by millions of taxpayer
dollars.
“We don’t have grade-A, prime
data, yet, and that leaves clini-
cians, and most importantly fam-
ilies and physicians, with the
challenge of: how do we interpret
incomplete data,” said Shmuel
Shoham, associate professor of
medicine at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine.
Shoham and colleagues at
Hopkins are testing whether
plasma can be useful as an outpa-
tient treatment, with $35 million
in funding from the Defense De-
partment. One trial will test the
treatment in people with a
known exposure to the coronavi-
rus to see if it prevents disease.
Another will test whether it is
effective in people in the early
stages of disease, who aren’t sickenough to go to the hospital.
A different trial, called C3PO,
supported by $7 million from the
National Institutes of Health, will
test whether plasma transfusions
could help patients who show up
in the emergency room and are at
high risk of developing severe
disease.
A trial based in several New
York hospitals is testing whether
convalescent plasma helps hospi-
talized patients.
Evidence that convalescent
plasma works will also help in-
form other efforts to develop
coronavirus countermeasures.
Scientists have been encouraged
by early vaccine tests that show
they trigger antibodies in the
blood capable of neutralizing the
virus, just like the ones that
develop after a natural infection.
Much of the hope for coronavi-
rus treatments lies in a class of
drugs called monoclonal antibod-
ies, antibody drugs that block
infection.
Companies are also working to
develop a highly purified product
from blood plasma, called hyper-
immune globulin, that would
have more consistency. The de-
velopment of such a product
could surmount some of the is-
sues with plasma, including the
variability in the amount of anti-
bodies among people who do-
nate, with some people develop-
ing a very strong antibody re-
sponse and others having small
amounts or no antibodies.
[email protected]Trump urges recovered covid-19 patients to give plasma for antibody tests
JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, and White House coronavirus task force
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