Over 60 US stadiums and other venues are deploying an app from Clear to verify people’s COVID-19 status, placing the New York company known for its airport security fast lanes at the forefront of a national debate over “vaccine passports.” Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants and New York Mets are among the first big businesses to demand guests prove they tested negative for the virus or are immunized against it. While the teams welcome paper proof, they encourage downloading records onto Clear's Health Pass feature for convenience. As with mask mandates, such requirements are under attack from Republican politicians and anti-surveillance activists, as un-American intrusions on civil liberties. They fear businesses will discriminate against the unvaccinated and unnecessarily amass personal data. Republican governors including in Florida and Texas last month moved to bar some establishments from asking about immunization status, though legal experts say door-checks are lawful to protect public health. Privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation fears Clear and other passport apps will hold data indefinitely and morph into consumer trackers. Clear said users control their health records. As a business based on replacing physical IDs, tickets and credit cards with facial or fingerprint recognition, Clear has a huge opportunity in emerging health-check rules that would familiarize more people with its technology. "Those experiences where you have to prove something about you – if we can help empower the consumer to get through that more quickly - that is our core business," said Catesby Perrin, Clear's executive VP of growth.<br/>
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The United States set another record for the number of air travelers since the pandemic set in, although passenger numbers remain far below 2019 levels. More than 1.6m\ people were screened at US airport checkpoints on Sunday, according to the TSA. That was the highest number screened since March 12 of last year when air travel began to plummet. However, it was still 35% below the number of airport travelers reported on the comparable Sunday in 2019, according to TSA figures. Airlines started to see an increase in bookings around mid-February, and the TSA has screened at least 1m people every day since March 11. Vacation destinations have been most popular — business travel, which is more profitable for airlines, remains drastically reduced. Government restrictions are also sharply limiting international travel, another lucrative piece of the airline business.<br/>
The US FAA said Monday that airlines have referred approximately 1,300 unruly-passenger reports since February and the agency has identified potential violations in about 260 cases. In March, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said he would indefinitely extend a "zero tolerance policy" on unruly air passengers first imposed in January, and said that airlines had reported hundrends of cases since December -- most which involved passengers not wearing masks as required on airplanes. The FAA has initiated about 20 enforcement cases and is preparing a number of additional enforcement actions, the agency said Monday. The US TSA on Friday extended a federal mandate on wearing face masks onboard airplanes and in airports and in other transit modes through Sept 13 that had been set to expire May 11. Dickson said in March the zero tolerance policy would last until at least as long as the federal transit mask requirements. Delta has banned more than 1,200 passengers for failing to wear masks from future flights but not all of those have been referred to the FAA. On Friday, TSA said transportation system operators have reported almost 2,000 passengers for refusing to wear a face mask since Feb. 2 when the federal requirements took effect. TSA will assess civil penalties if necessary, and afford due process to those fined, the agency said.<br/>
A coalition of airline and travel groups urged the US and the UK governments to lift travel restrictions between the two nations, citing the growth in vaccinations and other tools that limit the spread of Covid-19. Officials should announce reopening before the Group of Seven economic talks scheduled for June, the groups said Monday in joint letters to President Joe Biden and PM Boris Johnson. “We are confident that the right tools now exist to enable a safe and meaningful restart to transatlantic travel,” said the letter from 49 industry groups and unions on both sides of the Atlantic. “Safely reopening borders between the US and UK is essential for both countries’ economic recovery from Covid-19.”<br/>
Regulators have outlined plans to ease restrictions into European Union states for travellers that are either fully vaccinated against the coronavirus or from countries where the pandemic has been controlled. The EC’s proposal, which paves the way to reopening EU tourism markets, reflects progress of vaccination programmes and scientific evidence of their role in breaking the transmission chain. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen today tweeted: “Time to revive EU tourism industry & for cross-border friendships to rekindle – safely. We propose to welcome again vaccinated visitors & those from countries with a good health situation. But if variants emerge we have to act fast: we propose an EU emergency brake mechanism,” she adds. The Commission’s proposal, released on 3 May, would allow travellers into the bloc who have received their last dose of an EU-approved vaccine at least 14 days before arrival. It envisages travellers proving their vaccination status with a “Digital Green Certificate” issued by EU states, or with other equivalent methods of proof. The EU put forward its Digital Green Certificate proposals in March. EU members should accept certificates from non-EU countries based on national law, says the commission.<br/>
Singapore’s transport minister has played down any indication of a V-shaped recovery of the aviation industry this year, but notes that the first shoots of recovery are starting to form and this is something “worth working towards”. Furthermore, if governments cautiously open up to regions with low coronavirus infections — while tightening measures for areas with high infections rates — “we should see some safe opening of air travel” this year, said Ong Ye Kung. He was speaking at a virtual conference on safe reopening of international borders, organised by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Business Advisory Council. Ong’s comments come a week after Singapore and Hong Kong announced the relaunch of an air travel bubble arrangement between both cities, after a failed attempt in late 2020. Since then, Singapore has seen an uptick in local coronavirus cases, including a cluster at a hospital. Ong told the forum that while the number of unlinked cases in the city-state were still low, recent developments have underscored the fragility of air travel bubble arrangements, as well as a broader reopening of borders. “[The] reopening of borders is something that requires a lot of work, a lot of discussions, and is an imperative in the immediate to medium-term,” says Ong. The minister notes that the “key objective” of an air travel bubble “is to replace quarantine with other risk mitigation measures, because quarantine kills the demand for travel”. <br/>