US. The government’s move to require visas for travellers from most countries when they transit through the US to another foreign airport (The Moodie Report 4 August) is set to do long-term damage to the hard-pressed US travel industry, analysts say.
If the suspension becomes permanent, foreign travellers will avoid US hubs and airlines, said industry analyst Bob Mann of RW Mann & Co in Port Washington, New York.
Locations such as Vancouver in Canada are well positioned to take transit passengers who previously stopped in US cities, Mann said.
Of the 50 million passengers who fly between the US and Latin America each year, around 200,000 use the US as a transit point. About 73,000 Mexican travellers each year use the non-visa transit programmes. Travellers in every Central and South American country and every nation in Asia except Brunei and Singapore must now apply for a visa and pay a US$100 fee to make a stopover in US airports.
Passengers from 27 “visa-waiver” countries – mostly in Europe – are not affected by the suspensions. Those countries include France, Germany, the UK and Italy.
American Airlines, which according to the Wall St Journal, carried 93,328 passengers in 2002 under the transit-without-visas programme, is the airline most severely affected. About 600,000 foreign travellers used the programme last year, according to various US reports.
