As the summer travel season takes off and people cautiously return to the skies, they can expect to run into more health screenings at airports, the latest private sector effort to enhance safety.
Airlines for America, an organization that advocates for leading U.S. airliners, announced the screening enhancements Monday, three days after industry leaders met with Vice President Mike Pence at the White House.
Seven airlines, including American, Delta, and United, have started or will soon start requiring passengers to fill out a document about their health at the time of check-in. Passengers will have to confirm that they will bring a face covering and wear it at the airport, on the jet bridge, and aboard the plane. They will have to state whether they have a fever or other symptoms of the coronavirus, including coughing, shortness of breath, muscle pain, or a sore throat.
Passengers will also have to declare whether they have been around anyone who had symptoms of or tested positive for the virus in the last 14 days.
The new measures will be rolled out as soon as possible, according to Airlines for America President and CEO Nicholas Calio. Travelers who refuse to fill out the document or who do not meet all of the standards risk being turned away by company officials.
The new step is the toughest the U.S. companies have taken in recent months as the Trump administration remains on the sidelines. In May, two months after President Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, U.S. airliners began requiring masks on flights, but the measure could not be enforced by flight crews or gate agents because it had not been required by the Federal Aviation Administration. Alaska, Hawaiian, JetBlue, and Southwest have signed on to the plan.
The Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America President Sara Nelson recently told Congress the requirements were not being followed and without federal rules behind the private sector policy, airline employees were helpless to enforce them.
“Flight attendants are left to manage a hodgepodge of airline policies on the front lines,” Nelson, a 24-year flight attendant, told the House homeland security subcommittee on transportation and maritime security. “Most travelers comply with the requirement, but conflict still flares up as some have been led to believe masks are a political statement, rather than a public health necessity.”
FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson told Congress the agency was a “facilitator,” not an enforcer.
The issue arose in Friday’s talks between airline executives and administration officials, including Pence, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Administration officials were open to implementing temperature tests but grappled with how to go about doing them and what to do with passengers who fail the tests, according to a report. Frontier Airlines is the only U.S. airline that imposes temperature checks on passengers before boarding a flight. Very few airports nationwide require passengers to undergo any physical screenings.
The Transportation Security Administration, which tracks the number of passengers boarding flights, reported more than 633,000 screenings on Sunday, making it the busiest day at airports nationwide since March 18. Sunday’s figure was still about one-quarter of the volume seen on the same day a year earlier.
