Apac governments should collaborate to support air travel recovery

GOVERNMENTS in the Asia-Pacific (Apac) region should collaborate with each other and create a simpler, harmonised approach for travel regulations to boost passenger confidence.

This comes as the region's air travel industry is losing its competitiveness as it lags behind other regions, said the Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association (Aptra) and Airports Council International (ACI) Asia-Pacific on Tuesday (Mar 29).

The ACI forecasts that airports in the region will likely book revenue losses of US$27 billion in 2022, with the lack of a standardised travel protocol across the region hindering air travel recovery.

ACI Asia-Pacific noted that the biggest operational challenges in the region include a lack of internationally aligned digital health checks, onerous and time-consuming manual checks amid a reliance on paper documents, and testing obligations at both departure and arrival.

Stefano Baronci, director general of ACI Asia-Pacific, noted that travel protocols in Asia Pacific have become "excessively complicated and scarcely predictable".

Baronci said: "Scientific and consolidated practices at international level provide ample justification for applying simpler measures at all airports, for vaccinated passengers, that would bring the region back to its leading position for air travel and tourism."

As such, the 2 associations are recommending governments in the region implement a compatible digital Covid certificate or its equivalent to facilitate safe and easy travel within Apac, such as within the European Union states.

Governments should also standardise protocols, health credentials and vaccination requirements on a regional and/or sub-regional level, to minimise the need for repeated document checking and to reduce the time required to process passengers. For example, airports can limit Covid testing to pre-departure testing to alleviate congestion.

Additionally, governments should implement travel regimes recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), and avoid blanket travel bans and quarantines.

Aptra president Sunil Tuli said: "As more countries in the region open up, we are asking all Apac governments to reduce onerous protocols and requirements that currently vary from country to country and that negatively impact consumer appetite for travel."

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