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Getting standardized rules for international travelers amid the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest hurdle for Latin American airlines, with their recovery threatened by a lack of consensus among health authorities, industry leaders said on Sunday. Passengers suffer constant delays and restrictions as they travel between countries due to differing entry requirements established to curb the spread of different strains of the coronavirus, aviation industry directors said at a conference in Bogota, Colombia. "Standardization is vitally necessary to build confidence so people return to flying," said the Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association's (ALTA) CE, Jose Ricardo Botelho. The lack of accord between different countries, with frequent changes to air travel rules, leads to uncertainty for passengers, airlines, and airline staff, said Copa Airlines CEO Pedro Heilbron. "When you carry passengers and there are thousands of requirements, it's almost impossible that at least some passengers don't have the right paperwork," he told journalists in opening remarks at the ALTA annual conference. Some countries even fine airlines for passengers' non-compliance with the rules, Heilbron added, though did not say which ones. Almost a year and a half of restricted travel has put airlines and airports across the globe under severe financial strain, necessitating a more complete re-opening of travel so that the industry can recover, saving millions of jobs.<br/>

Panama’s Copa Airlines’ recovery depends in large part on factors it can’t control, including Latin American countries’ approaches to relaxing their pandemic-related travel restrictions. “It’s step-by-step and in many ways subject to other countries’ opening up,” Pedro Heilbron, the carrier’s CE said on the sidelines of the ALTA Leaders’ Forum on 24 October. “The travel restrictions in Panama are straightforward and easy to understand” but in other countries, he adds, the situation remains more complex. Executives from airlines in Latin America and the Caribbean are meeting in Bogota this week to discuss the region’s issues and path forward following the global health crisis. Prior to the pandemic, Copa had made a name for itself by connecting secondary city pairs across the Americas and the Caribbean - through its Panama City hub - on routes that are rarely, if at all, serviced by other carriers and carry too few passengers to make direct flights profitable. The airline’s strategy benefited from Panama’s advantageous geographical location, directly at the centre of the north and south American continents. A new terminal at Panama City’s Tocumen International airport, opened in 2019, supported Copa’s ambitions. Mirroring other regions, leisure travel demand in Latin America is rapidly approaching - and in some cases has surpassed - pre-coronavirus levels, as vacationers and those visiting family and friends finally get back in the air, Heilbron says. But like many airline CEOs around the world, he is anxiously awaiting the return of higher-margin business travel, which remains at below 50% of 2019 levels “What we are hearing from our corporate accounts always changes,” he says. “It’s always, the next quarter, or the next quarter, or the quarter after that. The target keeps moving.” That said, the carrier has restored most of its network to the USA, an important market for the all-Boeing 737 carrier.<br/>