As coronavirus vaccines started rolling out late last year, there was a palpable sense of excitement. People began browsing travel websites and airlines grew optimistic about flying again. Ryanair even launched a "Jab & Go" campaign alongside images of 20-somethings on holiday, drinks in hand. It's not working out that way. For a start, it isn't clear the vaccines actually stop travellers spreading the disease, even if they're less likely to catch it themselves. Neither are the shots proven against the more-infectious mutant strains that have startled governments from Australia to Britain into closing, rather than opening, borders. An ambitious push by carriers for digital health passports to replace the mandatory quarantines killing travel demand is also fraught with challenges and has yet to win over the WHO. This bleak reality has pushed back expectations of any meaningful recovery in global travel to 2022. That may be too late to save the many airlines with only a few months of cash remaining. And the delay threatens to kill the careers of hundreds of thousands of pilots, flight crew and airport workers who've already been out of work for close to a year. Rather than a return to worldwide connectivity - one of the economic miracles of the jet era - prolonged international isolation appears unavoidable. Story has more.<br/>
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Among governments and those in the travel industry, a new term has entered the vocabulary: vaccine passport. One of President Biden’s executive orders aimed at curbing the pandemic asks government agencies to “assess the feasibility” of linking coronavirus vaccine certificates with other vaccination documents, and producing digital versions of them. Denmark’s government said on Wednesday that in the next three to four months, it will roll out a digital passport that will allow citizens to show they have been vaccinated. It isn’t just governments that are suggesting vaccine passports. In a few weeks, Etihad Airways and Emirates will start using a digital travel pass, developed by the IATA, to help passengers manage their travel plans and provide airlines and governments documentation that they have been vaccinated or tested for Covid-19. The challenge right now is creating a document or app that is accepted around the world, that protects privacy and is accessible to people regardless of their wealth or access to smartphones. Story features what we know about the current status of digital vaccine passports.<br/>
Sweden plans to roll out a “digital vaccination certificate” and has tasked three government agencies to develop the infrastructure to handle the relevant personal data. The new certificate should be ready for use “before the summer,” Health Minister Lena Hallengren and Minister of Digitalization Anders Ygeman said Thursday. The Nordic country is following similar initiatives to help ease international travel hit by lockdowns to fight the pandemic even as there are debates over whether limits to the freedom of movement on such grounds would be legal. “Such a certificate must be recognized by the countries of the world,” Hallengren said. “For that reason, Sweden is actively working with the WHO and the EU to ensure that the certificates maintain an international standard.”<br/>
Some airline executives and labor unions are seeking a third round of billions in federal aid as tens of thousands of workers again face furloughs with travel demand still depressed in the Covid pandemic. The current round of aid, $15b, expires on April 1, and American Airlines and United over the past week have warned they could cut a combined 27,000 jobs then. Those funds required airlines to call back workers who were furloughed in the fall and maintain current jobs. “Essential workers have been living with incredible chaos and uncertainty. The furloughs are felt by the entire workforce,” Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the country’s largest flight attendants union, said in written testimony at a House hearing Thursday on transportation during the pandemic. “A continuation of [payroll support] can’t wait.” Congress set aside $25b in aid designed to keep employees on the payroll at the start of the crisis last year that required them to maintain jobs until Oct. 1. A $15b aid package was passed in the latest coronavirus relief bill in December that has the same terms through March 31. Airlines and labor unions now want another $15b to guarantee jobs through Sept. 30.<br/>
A top aviation union leader warned on Thursday that mandatory COVID-19 testing requirements for travelers boarding US domestic flights could devastate the airline industry and potentially lead to bankruptcies among airlines. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA representing workers at 17 airlines, asked at a US House of Representatives committee hearing why airlines and not other transit modes were being singled out. “Isolating the airline industry and not doing the same thing for mass transit or doing this at grocery stores or restaurants doesn’t make any sense,” she told the transportation and infrastructure committee. US government-required testing before domestic flights could lead to “airline bankruptcies. That is how devastating it could be,” she said.<br/>
West Texas Intermediate crude touched highs not seen since January 2020, setting airlines up for a quandary — absorb that cost or pass it on to a consumer already wary of flying during a pandemic. Add that to the industry’s list of headwinds, Washington Crossing Advisors portfolio manager Chad Morganlander said Wednesday. “This is just one of a litany of concerns when it comes to the airline industry. We would avoid these companies and that group,” he said. “We believe that these companies have way too much debt. They have high embedded costs structures, making them less flexible and less profitable when you have the situations like oil going higher.” The airlines are still well off their pre-pandemic highs even as the S&P 500 has rebounded to touch fresh records this year. The JETS global jets ETF, which holds stocks such as Delta and United, has bounced nearly 100% off its March low but remains 30% from a high set a year ago. Currently trading at $22.38, it would need to rally 55% to catch up to its record set at the beginning of 2018. <br/>
Scotland’s busiest airport has gone back a quarter century in terms of passenger numbers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. During 2020, Edinburgh airport handled only 3,478,501 passengers, less than a quarter of the previous year. With the nation’s main international gateway currently at 1% of normal travellers, the airport’s boss has warned that “choice of airlines and destinations” may be much smaller once recovery begins. Gordon Dewar, CE of Edinburgh airport said: “The fall in our passenger numbers is only one reflection of the long-term damage being inflicted by Covid-19 on Scotland’s economy and its social fabric, but it is a worrying one and there is no clear path to recovery. Nobody should assume that when the pandemic subsides, life will go back to normal. At the airport, we will be starting from a low level of activity not recorded here since 1995 and the choice of airlines and destinations may be dramatically different to those we had worked hard to build before 2020 and on which many people depend for bringing visitors to Scotland and for holidays and business.”<br/>