Originally Posted by
GrayAnderson
And per those regulations, my understanding on reading that is that the airlines are getting a bit of cover to not have to pay out if (for example) you had booked, the flight went, but you could not take said flight due to travel restrictions.
It's the exact opposite.
People holding non-refundable tickets are now able to obtain the value of their spend in a voucher. Which is far better than having the value of the ticket completely lost, which is what would happen to those non-refundable tickets under normal circumstances.
And most (all?) airlines have introduced these measures voluntarily, anyway. They have all been allowing people to not travel and still have some claim on using the value of their non-refundable tickets at some future date.