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Michigan residents who are behind on their water bills could see their taps start to run dry in five days, once a state shut-off ban instituted at the height of the coronavirus pandemic expires. But Monica Lewis-Patrick said she isn’t waiting around for that to happen, the Washington Post reported. The 55-year-old Detroit-based activist leaped into action last week, purchased about 68,000 water bottles and set in motion a plan to truck them to families across the state out of a fear that other government aid may not reach them in time. “There is no policy, no safety, after March 31, from seeing massive numbers of people at risk,” said Lewis-Patrick, president of We the People of Detroit, a community advocacy organization. But the wave of potential water shut-offs in Michigan reflects a broader, national crisis in the making: Utility protections enacted in the early months of the pandemic are slated to expire in some states — including Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont — over the next few weeks. The looming lapses have registered new urgent alarm among congressional lawmakers and community activists nationwide, who say the Biden administration should have acted faster, and sooner, to distribute federal aid to households at risk.

The latest setbacks to the return of air travel are stoking concern that a cash crunch is about to bear down on the airline industry, Bloomberg News reported. A second summer lost to the coronavirus crisis would likely trigger a spate of airline failures and bankruptcy filings, alongside a repeat of 2020’s bailouts, job cuts, and jetliner deferrals and cancellations, according consultants IBA Group. In just the past week, the optimism that took the Bloomberg World Airlines Index to the highest since the start of the pandemic has evaporated. TUI AG, the world’s biggest tour operator, scaled back its summer schedule to reflect a peak season that won’t start until July, at least two months later than normal. Ryanair Holdings Plc held a press briefing to reassure would-be holidaymakers they could change flights for free and exhorted them not to be “panicked” by negative headlines. “The ground is shifting from one day to the next,” IBA’s Stuart Hatcher said in an interview. Governments are aware that pushing back the reopening of travel will mean more pain for the aviation industry but have been spooked by resurgent infection rates even as vaccine rollouts continue, he said.

Companies harmed by the coronavirus pandemic can soon borrow up to $500,000 through the Small Business Administration’s emergency lending program, raising a cap that has frustrated many applicants, the New York Times reported. “The pandemic has lasted longer than expected,” Isabella Casillas Guzman, the agency’s administrator, said on Wednesday. “We are here to help our small businesses, and that is why I’m proud to more than triple the amount of funding they can access.” The change to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program — known as EIDL and pronounced as idle — will take effect the week of April 6. Those who have already received loans but might now qualify for more money will be contacted and offered the opportunity to apply for an increase, the agency said. The Small Business Administration has approved $200 billion in disaster loans to 3.8 million borrowers since the program began last year. Unlike the forgivable loans made through the larger and more prominent Paycheck Protection Program, the disaster loans must be paid back. But they carry a low interest rate and a long repayment term. Normally, the decades-old disaster program makes loans of up to $2 million, and in the early days of the pandemic, the agency gave some applicants as much as $900,000. But it soon capped loans at $150,000 because it feared exhausting the available funding. That limit — which the agency did not tell borrowers about for months — angered applicants who needed more capital to keep their struggling ventures alive. The agency has $270 billion left to lend through the pandemic relief program, James Rivera, the head of the agency’s Office of Disaster Assistance, told senators at a hearing yesterday.

Cineworld will ask shareholders to approve an increase in its debt ceiling next month after the pandemic-stricken cinema group plunged to a $3 billion loss last year, Reuters reported. The Regal Cinemas owner, forced by coronavirus lockdowns to shut most of its almost 800 theatres in October and temporarily lay off about 45,000 staff, sunk to its first pretax loss as a listed company last year, after a $212.3 million profit in 2019. Its shares tumbled 9% to 94 pence in early Thursday trading, the worst performance on the UK mid-cap index. The group, which is set to reopen its U.S. chains next month, said it had secured commitments for a new $213 million 7.5% convertible bond due in 2025 to bolster its finances. It also has waivers on its borrowing terms until June next year. It expects to reopen cinemas in Britain and the rest of the world in May, and sees pent-up demand after strong industry reopenings in China, Japan and Australia.

United Airlines plans to add more than two dozen new flights starting Memorial Day weekend, the latest sign that demand for leisure travel is picking up as the national vaccination rate moves higher, the New York Times reported. Most of the new flights will connect cities in the Midwest to tourist destinations, such as Charleston, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach in South Carolina; Portland, Maine; Savannah, Ga.; and Pensacola, Fla. United also said it planned to offer more flights to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America in May than it did during the same month in 2019. The airline has seen ticket sales rise in recent weeks, according to Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president of domestic network planning and scheduling. Customers are booking tickets further out, too, he said, suggesting growing confidence in travel. “Over the past 12 months, this is the first time we are really feeling more bullish,” Mr. Gupta said. Airports have been consistently busier in recent weeks than at any point since the coronavirus pandemic brought travel to a standstill a year ago. Well over one million people were screened at airport security checkpoints each day over the past two weeks, according to the Transportation Security Administration, although the number of screenings is down more than 40 percent compared with the same period in 2019.

The number of personal and business bankruptcies filed last year in the country fell by nearly 30% from 2019 despite the economic distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Los Angeles Times reported. The decline was largely driven by a roughly 31% fall in personal bankruptcies but also a nearly 5% slide in filings due to business debts, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court statistics. The court’s Central District of California — which includes Los Angeles, Orange and five other counties — has been no exception, experiencing a 27% decline in all cases, including a 15% decline in business-related filings. There was one record set last year, which was by the 62 public and private companies that had assets of $1 billion or more before filing for bankruptcy. That topped the 58 in 2009, according to New Generation Research, a Boston firm that operates the BankruptcyData website. However, a broader measure of corporate distress was less dire: There were only 110 publicly traded companies — including smaller ones not traded on major exchanges — that filed for bankruptcy. That was more than the 64 in 2019 but well under the 211 in 2009 amid the Great Recession or the 263 in 2001 after the tech bust, the BankruptcyData numbers show. “For a while, I was very convinced that [filings] were going to pop down the line, but 12 months into this they haven’t,” said ABI's Ed Flynn, who notes national filings were still down in the middle of March by some 45% compared with the same period last year when the pandemic-related shutdowns started. “People, mainly through government actions, have not yet felt the pain, and have not had the type of event that would precipitate a bankruptcy. They may not be paying their rent or their mortgage, but they are not being foreclosed on yet,” Flynn said. And for those debts not subject to any governmental restraint on collections there have been practical considerations, including a pandemic-related backlog in California state courts that have made it challenging for creditors to get judgments, L.A.-area bankruptcy attorneys say. Unless debtors are facing an immediate threat — such as a seizure of assets or garnishment of a wage — they will often avoid bankruptcy, which is costly and time-consuming in itself. “It’s a trustee looking into every transaction in your economic sock drawer. It’s just not a pleasant or good thing,” said L.A. bankruptcy attorney J. Scott Bovitz. “Individuals don’t tend to file bankruptcy unless they really, really need to. As long as there are a couple of dollars coming in the door from somewhere they tend to put it off.”

Millions of homeowners have been excluded from federal protections providing pandemic-related mortgage-payment relief. Now, many who have suffered setbacks during the public health emergency find their homes are at risk, MarketWatch.com reported. While homeowners with mortgages backed by the federally chartered Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or by the federal government can qualify for up to 18 months of pandemic-related forbearance and are shielded by a foreclosure moratorium that extends through the end of June, among other protections, there’s no nationwide relief for loans that are not federally backed. The result: Non–federally backed borrowers are sometimes offered only short-term payment suspensions and relatively unaffordable repayment plans, and, in the worst cases, they’ve received no relief and lost their homes midpandemic. Their fate often depends on the identity of the loan holder. Many of these loans are held in bank portfolios, where the bank has considerable discretion to offer the type of relief it sees fit, while others are owned by smaller investors or packaged into private-label securities, where the deal documents can govern what types of relief servicers can offer to borrowers.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey says her office secured a guarantee through bankruptcy court to process refunds for Boston Sports Clubs customers who were charged for their memberships during the pandemic, WCVB.com reported. Last year, WCVB showed how Boston Sports Clubs kept charging members during the shutdown despite laying off staff and closing its doors. When the gym reopened, members say BSC made it nearly impossible to cancel without further charges, a violation of Massachusetts state law. After receiving thousands of complaints, Massachusetts Attorney General Healey sued BSC in the fall and the company declared bankruptcy. Healey now says her office secured a guarantee through bankruptcy court to process refunds for customers. Now, almost 600 customers will be getting back about $127,000, or an average of $215 each. Healey said her lawsuit is still moving forward and is seeking further assets from the company and its former leaders to make sure everyone who is entitled to a refund will get one.