The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said the airline industry is now over the worst of the Covid pandemic, but urged governments to simplify travel rules and open borders to help the aviation sector operate within a now “endemic” phase of the virus, APA reports citing The Guardian.
Total industry losses are expected to fall to $11.6bn (£8.5bn) in 2022, according to Iata forecasts, which would mean a cumulative loss of just over $200bn in three years as a result of Covid.
Iata’s director-general, Willie Walsh, said:
We are past the deepest point of the crisis. While serious issues remain, the path to recovery is coming into view.
Walsh called for harmonisation of travel restrictions. Given the improved data, knowledge, vaccines and testing, he said, “the idea that the measures we put in place in February 2020 are relevant today is a nonsense”.
Travel restrictions are a complex and confusing web of rules with very little consistency among them. And there is little evidence to support ongoing border restrictions and the economic havoc they create.
Where people are fully vaccinated, they should be allowed to travel without restriction or testing.
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