Foreign Airlines Seek New Risk-based Guidelines for Travel
Foreign airlines have urged governments to follow new guidelines initiated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to encourage safe travels across borders.
The airlines, under the aegis of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), sought a “risk-based approach” that reduces the emphasis on testing and quarantine.
Specifically, the new proposal deemphasizes proof of COVID-19 vaccination as a mandatory condition for entry or exit. Relaxes measures such as testing and quarantine requirements for travelers, who are fully vaccinated or have had a confirmed previous COVID-19 infection within the past six months and are no longer infectious.
The recommendation ensures alternative pathways for unvaccinated individuals through testing so that they are able to travel internationally. The WHO recommends rRT-PCR tests, or antigen detection rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDTs) followed by confirmatory rRT-PCR tests of positive samples, for this purpose.
Also, the WHO asked airlines to implement tests and quarantine measures for international travelers “on a risk-based manner” with policies on testing and quarantine regularly reviewed to ensure they are lifted when no longer necessary.
IATA’s Director-General, Willie Walsh, said these “commonsense, risk-based recommendations” from WHO if followed by states will allow for international air travel to resume while minimizing the chance of importing COVID-19.
“As WHO notes—and as the latest UK testing data proves—international travelers are not a high-risk group in terms of COVID-19. Out of 1.65 million tests carried out on arriving international passengers in the UK since February, only 1.4 per cent were positive for COVID-19. It’s long past time for governments to incorporate data into risk-based decision-making processes for re-opening borders,” Walsh said. Read more
US Hints it Could Start to Re-open International Air Travel
US president Joe Biden has hinted that the US could start to re-open international air travel for countries that have made good progress in their vaccination programmes “within days”.
Speaking in Germany, the President made the comments after official studies from the US Department of Defense, and Harvard University concluded air travel was safe.
The move could pave the way for the return of mass transatlantic flights, the loss of which has hurt airlines such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
Virgin Atlantic’s chief customer and operating officer Corneel Koster recently called on the US government to open up travel saying: “Vaccination levels are very high in the UK, and very high in the US – if we follow the data the US should open. So should big parts of Europe, and so should other parts of the world. Step by step aviation can be rebuilt safely.
“We are calling on the Biden administration as well to allow Brits to travel there.”
There has been no official statement on air travel to the US but hopes are rising in the industry that it will be imminent.
Strengthening Consumer Protection in Aviation Sector
Last week, the Aviation Minister, Senator Hadi Sirika said local air passengers in Nigeria who suffer flight delays at the airport for two hours (the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) later corrected it to three hours) or more are entitled to a refund of their full ticket value from the airline.
Sirika, who featured in the weekly ministerial press briefing organized by the Presidential Communication Team at the State House, Abuja, stated that infringements to the rights of travelers, both local and international, have laid down rules and guidelines that spell rights and punishments, just as there are punishments for travelers’ violation of good behavior.
According to him, there are channels of laying complaints at the airports, which would see to it that customer rights and privileges are protected but noted that most travelers fail to take advantage of the provisions because they fail to pay attention to instructions and information hanging around airports.
However, what the Minister said was not new because it is contained in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulation (NCAR) 2015 as amended, Part 19, which deals with Passengers’ Rights and Responsibilities and Airlines’ Obligations to Passengers.
That section addresses consumer protection issues, including, compensations for denied boarding, delays and cancellations of flights.
But with his pronouncement the matter was brought to the fore and elicited a lot of reaction from passengers, even as industry observers said while passenger protection is necessary, the Minister’s reinforcement of what is already existing gave the regulation a new twist and seems to have empowered passengers. Read more
Source: This Day Newspaper, UKAviation, The Guardian