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IATA says 69% of travellers will not consider flying if forced to quarantine
May 15th 2020
Nearly seven in 10 air travellers say they would not consider travelling if their journeys included 14-day arrival quarantine, figures from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) published this week show. Read More »
IATA said this week quarantine measures on arrival, such as the 14-day mandatory self-isolation that is in place in a number of countries around the world, would further damage in air travel.
The airline lobby group was calling for the global harmonisation of biosecurity measures as part of a risk-based layered approach.
“Even in the best of circumstances this crisis will cost many jobs and rob the economy of years of aviation stimulated growth," IATA director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, said in a statement on Wednesday.
"To protect aviation’s ability to be a catalyst for the economic recovery, we must not make that prognosis worse by making travel impracticable with quarantine measures."
An IATA survey of recent air travellers in April found 86% were somewhat or very concerned about being quarantined while travelling. Approximately 69% of respondents said they would not consider travelling if it involved a 14-day quarantine period.
IATA said measures that would give governments the confidence to open their borders included identifying symptomatic passengers from travelling through temperature screening alongside a robust system of health declarations and vigorous contact tracing to address the risk of asymptomatic travellers.
Mutual recognition of agreed measures was critical for the resumption of international travel, the association said.
"We need a solution for safe travel that addresses two challenges," de Juniac said. "It must give passengers confidence to travel safely and without undue hassle. And it must give governments confidence that they are protected from importing the virus.
"Our proposal is for a layering of temporary non-quarantine measures until we have a vaccine, immunity passports or nearly instant COVID-19 testing available at scale."
IATA chief economist, Brian Pearce, said international revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) may not recover to 2019 levels until 2023 or 2024.
