US airlines will require passengers to answer a series of health questions before boarding, including whether they have experienced covid-19 symptoms or have been exposed to someone that tested positive for the virus, the industry’s leading trade group said Monday. Major US carriers, including American, Delta and United are implementing the new health acknowledgment policy as an “additional level of protection during the pandemic,” Airlines for America said. Travellers should expect to be asked to fill out the new health questionnaire when they check-in, the airline trade group said. Besides questions about their health, passengers are asked to commit to wearing a face covering at the airport and on their flight. “Passengers who fail or refuse to complete the health acknowledgment may be deemed unfit to travel and each carrier will resolve the matter in accordance with its own policies,” A4A said. The new measure is expected to remain in place through the public health crisis. A4A President and CE Nicholas E. Calio said that the health assessments are one more measure in a “multilayered approach to help mitigate risk and prioritize the well-being of passengers and employees.” With the health questionnaires, airlines seek assurance from passengers that they are not experiencing covid-19 symptoms such as fever, shortness of breath and others such as a cough, loss of taste or smell, chills, muscle pain and sore throat.<br/>
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Getting screened at the airport by the TSA is not a socially distant experience. Your electronics and shoes go right into a plastic bin that ferried someone else’s through the X-ray machine just minutes before. You hand your ID to an officer sitting much closer than 6 feet away. And if something doesn’t look right, there’s the ultimate close contact with a stranger: the pat-down. With airlines slowly restoring flights and more people navigating checkpoints, the federal agency responsible for the safety of the traveling public says it’s going to great lengths to make its screening process safer during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s spacing flyers apart in queues, reducing the number of “touch points” at the start of screening, putting up plastic barriers at bag-drop points, wiping down bins, and requiring screeners to wear masks. But TSA is at heart a security agency, and there’s no substitute in its screenings for some person-to-person contact—even though that’s how the novel coronavirus spreads. The TSA’s roughly 50,000 agents, working in more than 400 airports, now have to balance security concerns with infection risks in the absence of any federal standards on mask-wearing or social distancing. The agency is also under pressure to screen passengers for symptoms of Covid-19, something in which it lacks expertise. Story has more.<br/>
After growing confusion over travel to Greece for British holidaymakers, the prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has confirmed that no flights from the UK will be allowed until 15 July. The country opens to other European nationalities, except Sweden, on 1 July. But concern about high levels of coronavirus infection in both the UK and Sweden have led to the cancellation of the first two weeks of July for airlines and tour operators from the two countries. Previously the tourism minister, Haris Theoharis, had warned that Greece may require British holidaymakers to wait up to three weeks before they could visit. It is not clear if any steps will be taken to prevent UK holidaymakers reaching Greece by other routes. The immediate impact is to ground all planned flights and holidays up to 14 July. <br/>
Bankrupt LATAM Airlines and Avianca Holdings are dramatically retrenching their once grand ambitions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing competition in Latin America as they mull once-unthinkable cooperation with rivals. Since May, LATAM has exited Argentina, partnered with rival Azul SA (AZUL.N) in Brazil and cut back domestic operations in Chile, while Avianca has departed Peru. LATAM is now open to a deeper alliance with Azul, even as the two airlines usually control a combined 60% of Brazil’s domestic market. The scaling back could reshape air travel in Latin America, weakening competition regionally and driving up ticket prices while also helping some carriers survive. The moves show how the industry is already shrinking through attrition, as airlines are too cash-strapped to consider buying the competition. “More than consolidation, many airlines will disappear,” said Eliseo Llamazares, an aviation consultant at KPMG. Latin American governments increasingly recognize there is a new reality, and have shifted their priorities to keeping local airlines alive instead of attracting new players. Attrition has also occurred in Ecuador, where TAME shut down, and in Mexico, where Interjet has scaled back. “If this trend is allowed to continue, connectivity around the region will be affected,” said Peter Cerda, vice president for the Americas at IATA, an airline industry group. “Less connectivity means less choice, and less choice usually translates into higher prices.” All airlines in Latin America face some risk of disappearing, analysts say.<br/>
Pilots flew Boeing’s 737 Max across Washington state in the first of several flights required for regulatory certification, an important milestone in returning the plane to service. The Chicago company’s stock gained 14.4% to $194.49 on Monday. US airline stocks also rose, with Southwest increasing the most, by 9.6% to $35.04. The airline has an all-Boeing fleet, including 34 Maxes that are grounded. Aviation regulators worldwide grounded the Max 15 months ago following the second of two crashes that killed a combined 346 people. The plane’s flight-control system has been implicated in the crashes. The US FAA said it was conducting a series of flights this week to gauge Boeing’s proposed changes to the flight-control system. The jet left Boeing Field in Seattle at 9:55am Pacific time, headed to Moses Lake, Washington. “While the certification flights are an important milestone, a number of key tasks remain,” the agency said. “The FAA is following a deliberate process and will take the time it needs to thoroughly review Boeing’s work. We will lift the grounding order only after we are satisfied that the aircraft meets certification standards.” The federal agency said the flights, steered by pilots from both the FAA and Boeing, would take three days and cover “a wide array of flight manoeuvres and emergency procedures”.<br/>
Airbus is assuming a 40% drop in production over the next two years due to the coronavirus crisis, CE Guillaume Faury was quoted on Monday as saying. “For the next two years - 2020/21 - we assume that production and deliveries will be 40% lower than originally planned,” Faury told Die Welt newspaper. Airbus has so far said it could cut output by a third on average. On June 3, however, Reuters reported it was looking to hold underlying jet output at 40% below pre-pandemic plans for two years, adding pressure to cut thousands of jobs.<br/>