The U.S. and British governments are in talks to restart air travel between New York City and London with less harsh quarantine mandates for travelers ahead of the holiday season, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
“We’re at the early stages of working with our interagency partners, the industry, and our international partners for means to safely encourage transatlantic travel while mitigating public health risks,” a DHS official wrote in an email to the Washington Examiner Monday afternoon.
DHS and the Department of Transportation are leading U.S. efforts to reinstate travel between the two major cities and are doing so now, seven months after travel restrictions went into place, because of the increasing availability and speed of processing coronavirus tests, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Under the plan that officials in both countries are considering, travelers would have to be tested prior to leaving one country and again after arriving overseas. The double check would allow them to skip the present 14-day quarantine mandate, but parties involved are divided over whether people should be forced to stay in their hotels or homes for some length of period afterward. U.S. government officials have advocated for four-to-seven-day stay-at-home periods, but transportation and airline officials want to see a 24-hour quarantine.
The Trump administration broadened its travel ban on March 14 to a ban against all noncitizens arriving from the United Kingdom and Ireland. U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have returned from England since June 8 must stay home for two weeks unless they are coming from a country deemed by the government as “safe.”
The potential for normalized travel between both countries comes as the British government plans to further restrict its residents’ domestic activity, the Associated Press reported. British officials Monday announced plans to rein in socializing and business in the Liverpool region as outbreak levels increase. The plan would classify regions based on the number of cases in each zone and further limit public outing guidelines from the existing 10 p.m. curfew at bars and restaurants.
The New York City-London corridor is one of the most-traveled air travel paths worldwide. Last year, there were approximately 14,000 flights went between both New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport. A total of 5 million visitors traveled from the United States to England, and vice versa. Deaths from the coronavirus are higher in the U.K. than any other European country.
DHS, the White House National Security Council, and Transportation Security Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
