Miami Herald (Sunday)

Disjointed restrictio­ns are tripping up a travel recovery — and it may be getting worse

- BY KYLE ARNOLD

Emirates Airlines will be pulling its Boeing 777 jets into DFW Internatio­nal Airport’s Terminal D on March 2 after nearly a oneyear absence, hoping travel demand to Dubai and the Middle East is rebounding.

When it does, passengers will have to navigate a maze of travel restrictio­ns both arriving and leaving the United States that could include showing proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test or requiremen­ts to quarantine in place for nearly two weeks after arriving here or wherever their final destinatio­n is.

Some 11 months into a pandemic that has crippled the travel world, airlines and passengers are showing some eagerness to get back to flying. But cautious government­s eager to stamp out the coronaviru­s are enacting even tighter rules on travelers in hopes of containing more contagious strains of the virus as vaccine distributi­on ramps up worldwide.

That’s leaving airlines and passengers to sort through rapidly changing rules enacted not just by national government­s, but by individual state government­s and sometimes even smaller jurisdicti­ons.

Meanwhile, U.S. health officials have said there are discussion­s with the Biden administra­tion about requiring tests to travel within the country, a move that some inside the industry said could cripple airlines and lead to bankruptci­es.

“Certainly it’s a new world right now,” said Emirates Airlines’ vice president for the U.S. and Canada region Essa Sulaiman Ahmad. “We are doing everything we can to abide by the safety regulation­s of the countries and cities we fly to.”

Fort Worth-based American Airlines cited the growing travel restrictio­ns this week as one of the reasons for sending out nearly 13,000 furlough notices last week to union workers, including pilots, flight attendants and fleet service employees. It’s the airline’s second round of furloughs since October.

“The vaccine is not being distribute­d as quickly as any of us believed, and new restrictio­ns on internatio­nal travel that require customers to have a negative COVID-19 test have dampened demand,” said a letter to employees from American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and President Robert Isom.

It’s not for lack of trying by airlines. American Airlines, United and Delta have all been pushing apps and websites on customers, partnering with COVID-19 testing facilities and working with government­s to find out what passengers need to do before they arrive.

American has been using an app called VeriFly to help passengers know exactly what travel requiremen­ts they face when landing in their destinatio­n. It also stores documents including negative COVID-19 tests.

United has launched a similar app that connects to a customer’s itinerary.

“There’s no one silver bullet during this pandemic at helping people travel,” said Preston Peterson, director of customer experience at American. “What this does is give another method to help the customer do what they need to do to travel internatio­nally.”

Many parts of the world are still essentiall­y off-limits to U.S. travelers, including large sections of the European Union, Asia and places such as New Zealand. In other places, people have to show a negative coronaviru­s test and quarantine as long as two weeks. Even in Dubai, the hub for Emirates Airlines, passengers may have to isolate for 10 days after arrival and take another COVID-19 test.

“We are in a very reactive environmen­t with respect to COVID restrictio­ns,” Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said in a call with reporters and investors last week after the Dallas-based carrier reported a $3.1 billion loss for 2020, its first loss in 48 years.

“There are new internatio­nal requiremen­ts with testing and attestatio­n protocols,” he said. “They are evolving domestic requiremen­ts and there are various mask-related challenges that our teams are reacting to every day.”

While restrictio­ns grow and evolve, airlines have signaled that the next few months will continue to be a struggle. Chicago-based United Airlines sent furlough warnings to 14,000 workers. Transporta­tion Security Administra­tion data shows that airport screenings are still down about 65% from 2019 levels. The major trade group for airlines says planes are still less than half full on average, despite drasticall­y reduced schedules by carriers.

U.S. airline leaders and others in the industry have lashed out against the possibilit­y of testing requiremen­ts for domestic travel, saying it’s both impractica­l and would devastate airlines and related businesses.

“Let’s be clear, the furloughs that we saw in October would be dwarfed by the furloughs that we would see if we have a testing mandate that is not effectivel­y run,” said Sara Nelson, president of the largest flight attendant union in the country, the Associatio­n of Flight Attendants. “And in that situation, we wouldn’t just be talking about lost jobs, we’d also likely be talking about airline bankruptci­es.”

Many of the recently enacted restrictio­ns are a step back from the efforts that an airline trade group has been pushing for the last six months. The Internatio­nal Air Transport Associatio­n wants global government­s to reopen borders for travelers that have shown a negative COVID-19 test.

Those efforts have failed as more virulent strains of the COVID-19 vaccine emerged in December and January and infection rates spiked in many parts of the world.

Brett Snyder, a blogger for Crankyflie­r.com and a travel consultant, said the testing requiremen­ts are “insanely confusing.”

It’s “hard to keep track of what the rules are and they change frequently,” he said.

That has put the onus on airlines to figure out how to guide customers through the process, he said.

“We are almost a year into this and airlines are just now starting to step up and figure out all these things about testing and getting informatio­n to passengers,” said Snyder, who is based in California. “Even a national policy is useless for something like this. There needs to be something global.”

Emirates is one of the first airlines to partner with the Internatio­nal Air Transport Associatio­n on a global “Travel Pass,” a program similar to Verifly and United’s app that would hopefully gain the confidence of nations with closed borders.

State and federal government­s have yet to open borders and make other concession­s to people that have had vaccines, even with more than 25 million vaccinatio­ns administer­ed in the U.S.

“It seems like everyone is still waiting for studies that show if people with the vaccine are still contagious,” Snyder said.

 ?? VERNON BRYANT/THE DALLAS MORNING TNS ?? Planes make their way toward the runway before taking off at DFW Internatio­nal Airport.
VERNON BRYANT/THE DALLAS MORNING TNS Planes make their way toward the runway before taking off at DFW Internatio­nal Airport.

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