They might try, but Force Majeure is not a blanket get out of jail free card.

Legally it's pretty tight if a "black swan" event happens directly to you... ie a volcano or tsunami wipes out an airline's hub airport. Same if the fed grounds the airlines.

But if something happens to someone else which has ripple consequences and makes the economy bad, that's a stretch. Just because someone caught a virus from a bat in SE asia doesn't automatically let you off the hook for your obligations.

Might come down to magnitude... an economic downturn is not Force Majeure... but a really bad (catastrophic) downturn might be.