You can be sure that airline travel will be forever changed from the impact of COVID-19. Countries and airlines have been walking the tightrope of keeping passengers safe and not spreading the virus while not killing the industry all together.
Australia took drastic actions to contain the virus almost immediately, closing it’s borders to international travels back in March 2020 and a number of internal state borders in July. As the number of cases has flattened, domestic travel has slowly begun to open back up. However international travel is still banned at this time.
Australian based Qantas Airline CEO Alan Joyce announced in an interview that they will require a COVID-19 vaccination to travel internationally once they are made available.
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Joyce told Tracy Grimshaw, host of A Current Affair, they will change their terms and conditions for international travel to enforce their mandate.
“For international travelers that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they get on the aircraft.”
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He stated they will have to see how it all plays out for domestic travel but the vaccination will be required for international travel.
“Whether you need that domestically, we’ll have to see what happens with COVID-19 in the market, but certainly for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity,” Joyce said.
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It is likely that Qantas will not be the only airline instituting inoculation requirements, at least for international travelers.
“I’m talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe and I think it’s going to be a common theme across the board,” Joyce said. “… There’s a lot of logistics, a lot of technology that’ll be needed to put in place to make this happen, but the airlines and the governments are working on this as we speak.”
You can be sure that the airline industry will not be the only place that will implement these mandates. It is likely that many industries and institution will require vaccination for participation. How they plan to track who is vaccinated is yet to be determined.
China has asked the G20 for global participation in a QR code to trace vaccination and travel along with myriad of other financial measures to open up their markets and ease their restrictions.
It is only a matter of time before we will be forced to obtain a COVID-19 vaccination and the means to easily trace that we received it, especially under a Biden administration.
