The European airline sector mobilizes to end all anticovid restrictions. Just two years after all of Europe shielded itself from the pandemic, international airline and airport associations are putting pressure on all the restrictions that are still in place on flights within the European Union and the Schengen area to be lifted, according to publishes this Friday El Periódico de España.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which brings together the majority of airlines around the world, and the Airports Council International (ACI) ask the member states of the European Union to withdraw all measures before the summer season, from diagnostic tests before the flight to the presentation of vaccination certificates or forms to locate passengers at destination. They even ask that it not be mandatory to use masks on flights between countries that no longer require them indoors.
“As European countries open up and eliminate restrictions, it is logical to eliminate similar restrictions on air transport & rdquor ;, maintain the employers of airlines and airports, pointing to the lifting of anti-Covid prevention and control measures in other economic and social areas, and underlining that the population’s immunity is already at such levels that the risk of hospitalization or death linked to covid has been drastically reduced.
IATA and ACI, which have sent joint letters with their claims to the Ministers of Health and Transport of the countries of the European Union, go further and ask that these travel restrictions not be recovered in the future if new variants are detected. of covid. The organizations raise a study commissioned by themselves to OXERA and Edge Health to justify their refusal of new measures.
A report that concludes that, even if a new variant of the virus is discovered and travel restrictions are immediately applied, the peak of contagion is only delayed for a maximum of four days (and only two days if the measures take time to activate one week). “These negligible health benefits are outweighed by the significant social and economic harm caused by the negative impact of air travel.& rdquor ;, sentence the air transport associations.
In the letter sent to the Ministers of Health and Transport of the members of the EU, airlines and airports also demand that passengers vaccinated with any of the vaccines approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and not only those that have received the approval of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), in order to favor the recovery of long-haul flights.