No one could have foreseen what the world is going through as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Trying to compare our days with any earlier period in history seems senseless, as so many parameters have changed drastically, whether you take the Spanish flu, the great depression, the globalization of the past decades or the financial crisis of 2008/9 as your point of reference. And yet - however terrible the daily news - you may want to know what's happening in your field of economic activity, if only as some kind of background to the momentous things happening to us or around us.

South Africa's government and specialists appointed to try to save the state-owned airline have agreed to extend a deadline for trade unions to agree staff severance terms, a letter from the public enterprises department showed on Saturday.

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Saturday it has released US$9.5 billion in additional funds from the Payroll Support Program to U.S. air carriers, bringing to US$12.4 billion the total provided to the airline sector hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

El Al Israel Airlines on Sunday extended its suspension of scheduled passenger flights by a week until May 9 but said it will operate a number of special flights to and from the United States and Europe.

Rwanda's RwandAir will cut the salaries of its lowest paid employees by 8% and by 65% for its top earners as it seeks to survive the coronavirus crisis, an internal memo seen by Reuters on Sunday showed.

Virgin Atlantic is still talking with the British government about a bailout package to cope with the devastating effects of the coronavirus outbreak on travel as well as focusing on private sector funding, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.

Egypt's Nile Air on Sunday urged the government to buy stakes in private airline companies to help them survive the crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic.

Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA has been thrust into an uncertain future with no immediate plan B, while not ruling out seeking a bailout after Boeing Co jettisoned a US$4.2 billion commercial aerospace tie-up amid the coronavirus crisis.

European planemaker Airbus issued a bleak assessment of the impact of the coronavirus crisis, telling the company's 135,000 employees to brace for potentially deeper job cuts and warning its survival is at stake without immediate action.

Several media organizations reported that authorities in Pakistan have further extended its suspension of international flight operations till May 15, 2020.