The UK government’s relaxation of international travel restrictions and news that vaccinated passengers from the UK and the EU can now travel to the US has set a light under the shares of British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG), which are up 21% over the last four trading days.
Transatlantic travel between London and New York is a key route for the airline industry and the biggest aviation market by capacity.
IAG’s fortunes are tied to the lucrative UK-US travel corridor and especially the London-New York route which generated over a billion dollars of annual revenues before the pandemic.
European airlines Lufthansa and Air France-KLM are also reliant on transatlantic travel routes and so it’s not surprising to see their share prices react positively with gains of around 11% over the last few days.
Meanwhile, the news has had a positive knock-on effect for the low-cost airlines with Jet2 (JET) shares up 9%, Eastern European specialist Wizzair (WIZZ) and Easyjest (EZJ) shares both up around 4% while Ryanair (RYA) has lagged.
