Airport tests and integrated tracking are critical to saving global economy

In 2019, 4.5billion people took flights for holidays and business, spurring economic growth across the globe. Today’s figure stands at a frightening 2.25billion. The only way the UK will even have a chance of recovering is if we get international travel to and from our shores booming.

So it’s now time to bring to an end the colossally ineffective, damaging “air corridor” or “air bridge” policy which is counterproductive in terms of health and devastating to chances of turning the global economy around.

How often do we look to countries like South Korea and Singapore for examples of how to handle pandemics? Yet nobody seems to question the fact that we can fly to Italy for our holidays, but we can’t travel to places like Singapore, the UAE or Hong Kong for business, where the disease has largely been brought under control.

Nobody doubts the Government’s motives. It is right to do everything it can to stem the tide of the disease, but there is no evidence that the countries on the list for quarantine-free travel are safe in terms of the threat posed by Covid-19. Even more damagingly, this blunt and ineffective tool is stopping us from developing policies that actually work in preventing its spread and can critically restart the economy.

Since April, the Hong Kong health department arranged for international airports to test all inbound travellers. When a passenger gets off a plane in Hong Kong, they are required to take a shuttle bus to a specimen collection centre, negating the need for clunky, burdensome quarantine requirements.

The UK should be introducing this system, playing a leading role to encourage other countries to develop standardised procedures for travellers. This laserlike focus on individual cases will do so much more to stem the tide than blanket quarantine measures, and it will give confidence to businesses to start travelling and exchanging goods and services again. The global economy cannot properly restart without business travel. Over a third of world trade is transported by air and however good videoconferencing has become, there will never be a substitute for face-toface experience and on-site visits for major cross-border business deals.

The Heathrow chief executive has said that at least 10,000 jobs could be saved if the Government approved airport virus tests as an alternative to quarantine. John Holland-kaye said testing could allow those with a negative result to skip quarantine, dramatically increasing everyone’s confidence in taking a flight.

Heathrow’s test centre is now capable of testing more than 13,000 passengers a day, with results available “within hours”. Yet the Government has done nothing to take advantage of this facility. Lufthansa and Centogene have opened a mass testing facility at Frankfurt airport, processing around 40,000 tests since it first opened. And as the German government looks to bring in stricter testing protocols, the throughput could increase further.

As of Aug 1, all inbound and transit passengers to the UAE, including Emiratis, must be tested for Covid-19 prior to boarding the flight.

Instead of this knee-jerk policy of adding countries to a seemingly arbitrary safe list, with no warning and no tangible public health benefits, the burden of proof should be reversed. The starting point must surely be that international travel should be possible unless the UK Government can prove or make a persuasive case for a country being unsafe?

This would create so much more certainty and allow the aviation industry – similar in size to the Swiss economy and providing 65.5million jobs worldwide – to begin to recover.

The UK Border Force is ill equipped to check passenger locator forms in their current format. A more effective process would incorporate these into airline reservation systems and submit health data electronically in advance, alongside passport and visa data. This could be shared with the Department of Health and crossmatched with in-country track and trace systems to target individual outbreaks.

Getting planes flying and making quick progress on business travel is the key to growing our way out of the economic misery we find ourselves in. But it’s not a zero-sum game between economic and health arguments.

The technology is there and industry has the capacity to deliver. We just need the Government to step up to the plate. By introducing airport tests and ensuring tracking and testing facilities are integrated into existing aviation risk assessment frameworks and are coordinated across global economies, we will be able to get the economy back on track whilst doing so much more to save lives.

‘It’s now time to bring to an end the colossally ineffective, damaging ‘air corridor’ or ‘air bridge’ policy’