Along with extensions to unemployment benefits and eviction protections, the new Coronavirus relief/stimulus bill includes a new round of funding for airlines, and, for the first time, includes the hotel industry.
Details are still not completely known, but there's $280 billion in the bill, nearly a third of the total, to reopen the Paycheck Protection Program that provides low-interest or forgivable loans to businesses to allow them to keep staff at work. Hotels will be eligible to tap that fund.
For airlines, the territory is more familiar, and the $15 billion the bill provides will be targeted to rehiring, with pay as of December 1, about 35,000 staff who were laid off after the previous funding ran out on October 1. Airlines will also be required to restore service to smaller cities, like New Haven, Connecticut and Worcester, Massachusetts, that lost all scheduled service when the funds ran out. The payroll and flight support runs to at least March 31.
Image: retired airliner at new TWA Hotel, New York JFK (photo by CurbedNY)
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