Qantas To Demand Passengers Are Vaccinated Before Int’l Travel
Qantas’ CEO has said that its passengers in the future must provide proof of vaccination against the coronavirus before they fly internationally.
Alan Joyce told CNN’s Nine News that requiring proof from travellers would be a “necessity” once Covid-19 vaccines become readily available.
“Whether you need that domestically, we will have to see what happens with Covid-19 in the market. But certainly, for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity,” Joyce said in the interview.
oyce believes that such a stance may become commonplace among global airlines after the pandemic subsides.
Most airlines and governments currently require a Covid-19 negative test prior to international travel but industry bodies are working on more efficient solutions to allow borders to reopen.
In the past, some countries required proof of vaccination against certain diseases before passengers travelled and some airline executives think there could be a return to that.
Air Arabia’s CEO, Adel Ali, said in an interview recently: “Nobody yet knows what the protocol for Covid-19 will be. Thirty years back everyone had to carry a yellow piece of paper showing they’d had certain vaccines when they travelled. Will we go back to vaccine certificates?”
In September, Etihad Airways’ CEO, Tony Douglas, said that passengers may have to to get used to routinely presenting ‘wellness certificates’ before being allowed to board flights in a post-pandemic world, similar to how they have to go through airport.
We believe that some form of wellness certification may well come into force,” Douglas said at the virtual Global Aerospace Summit. “Perhaps if we look at some of the parallels that have occurred over the last 30 years in aviation. In the security space, as an example, we could probably draw from perhaps Lockerbie, post-9/11, post-liquid bomb threat, [and see] that global standards ended up changing and harmonising.”
Requiring vaccines before travel is a contentious issue. Such measures could make it more difficult for people from poorer countries to travel if they are unable to access the vaccine.
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