Airlines require preflight health check for travel
New safety measures, policies vary by company
Now that travel is slowly resuming as more states relax coronavirus restrictions, airlines are adding another health safety measure.
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines said this week that they will require passengers to fill out a preflight health checklist during check-in.
United’s policy took effect Tuesday; Alaska’s will begin June 30.
The checklists vary by airline. Alaska calls it a health and wellness agreement and says travelers must verify they haven’t had any COVID-19 symptoms in the past 72 hoursor come into contact with someone who is symptomatic.
United’s “Ready to Fly” checklist asks passengers to confirm, among other things, that they have not had COVID-19-related symptoms in the past 14 days; been diagnosed with the virus in the past 21 days; or had close contact with someone who has COVID-19 in the past 14 days.
Frontier Airlines, the only U.S. airline taking passengers’ temperatures before a flight, asks passengers to complete a health acknowledgment form on its app or website as part of the check-in process.
Frontier’s questionnaire asks passengers to acknowledge that no one in their household has had symptoms for the past 14 days.
All make passengers acknowledge the airline’s policy requiring face masks at the airport and during the flight.
Travelers who don’t meet the requirement can reschedule their flight.
To win back skittish customers, airlines have spent the past three months intensifying their cleaning procedures and touting that and other safety measures every chance they get.
The airline business has been hammered by the coronavirus pandemic, and executives have repeatedly warned major layoffs are looming.
U.S. airlines carried 3 million passengers in April, a 96% drop from a year earlier and the lowest level since at least 1974, the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics announced Wednesday.