The three global airline alliances, oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance, are in full support of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) second-phase Council on Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART) report released on November 10. Together, they urge governments to implement the report guidelines for passenger testing protocols, as well as the adoption of digital health pass technology, so air travel may safely resume.
Government-imposed travel and entry restrictions continue to significantly impact global travel demand. Meanwhile, COVID-19 testing has emerged as an important part of an end-to-end solution to enable the safe restart of international travel by potentially reducing the reliance on the blunt instrument of blanket quarantines.
“We welcome the publication of the updated CART report which, among other things, calls for the serious consideration of screening and testing as a means for easing travel and border restrictions, and reviving the travel and tourism industry and the global economy,” said Star Alliance CEO Jeffrey Goh. “A robust protocol for testing will also provide further evidence to demonstrate that air travel is not a material cause for infections and will pave the way for a framework of trust to be established between countries.”
On behalf of their 58 member airlines, representing over 60% of world airline capacity and carrying over 1.87 billion passengers annually prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the three alliances are calling for a harmonized approach to testing that will form the foundation of a trust framework, as recommended by the ICAO guidelines.
