Airports Council International (ACI) World and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) this week jointly called for a global approach to testing international passengers as an alternative to quarantine measures.
Governments must cooperate to remove quarantine restrictions and restart air travel, the two aviation organizations said, noting a systematic approach to fast, practical, accurate, low-cost, easy-to-use COVID-19 testing will provide an effective way to give governments the confidence to re-open borders without quarantine.
“Airports and airlines are united in the view that a consistent approach to testing passengers will help to restore the confidence of passengers, avoid border closures, and remove cumbersome quarantine measures which are hampering the genuine efforts of the aviation industry to recover,” ACI World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said. “This will better foster recovery among airports, airlines and the travel and tourism sectors, thereby protecting jobs and providing the economic and social benefits that aviation delivers to the local, national, and global communities it serves.”
The aviation industry is working with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Council Aviation Recovery Taskforce (CART), which included the World Health Organization (WHO), to agree and implement a layered approach to health measures that will enable safe operations amid the COVID-19 crisis.
“Systematic testing is the key to restoring connectivity,” said IATA’s Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac. “We must learn to live with this disease and that includes safely restoring the freedom to travel. We need to do this with speed. Each day of delay puts more jobs at risk.”
