“Bottom line is we’re going to run just like business as usual, with a little higher heartbeat, and get it done,” he said.

Later, at a White House meeting with airline executives, President Trump dismissed a reporter’s question about whether the federal government would provide financial assistance to the industry. “Don’t ask that question, please,” he joked. “Because they haven’t asked it. So I don’t want you to give them any ideas.”

Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who also attended the meeting, sought to allay public fear over the outbreak. “It’s safe to fly,” Mr. Trump said. “And large portions of the world are very safe to fly. So we don’t want to say anything other than that.”

As the virus has spread, the administration has been in close contact with representatives of the travel and tourism industry, according to Scott Solombrino, executive director of the Global Business Travel Association, an industry group for corporate travel managers. Officials at various agencies addressed concerns and provided updates to industry officials on a Monday call, for example.

At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seeking the authority to compel airlines to share data on passengers and crews arriving from abroad who may be at risk of exposure to the communicable disease. The airline industry has argued that such a requirement would be too onerous and instead recommended that the data be assembled from various agencies that collect passenger information.

After the financial crisis, the aviation industry underwent a period of consolidation, during which airlines focused on increasing capacity and efficiency. In recent years, they squeezed profits from new, premium offerings and by harnessing a shift, driven by millennials, toward valuing experiences more highly than goods.

As a result, airlines ended 2019 on a positive note, but reports of the coronavirus outbreak began surfacing at the start of January. Before the month was out, it had spread far enough that all three airlines had announced plans to suspend service to China, the center of the epidemic, because of plummeting demand.