South Korea eases entry, but demand challenges for airlines remain

South Korea is the latest Asia Pacific country to announce significant relaxation of the international travel restrictions that were put in place as a response to COVID-19. But while this will make visiting South Korea much easier, the country's major airline is still cautious about demand recovery expectations.

The pace of border reopenings and quarantine reductions has been increasing across Asia Pacific in recent months. However, onerous testing requirements and a lingering wave of infections from the Omicron variant will still dampen international demand recovery in South Korea and elsewhere.

Korean Air intends to add some international capacity back in coming months, but it is not able to make more aggressive moves until more demand constraints are removed. This means it is keeping many of its passenger widebodies parked, while its domestic and freight operations do the heavy lifting.

While the airline would, no doubt, want to have reactivated more of its international network and fleet by now, it is still relatively well placed when compared with others in the Asia Pacific region.