Airlines Urge Biden Administration to Drop Pre-Departure Testing Rules For International Travel

Airlines and a slew of travel industry groups urged the Biden administration to ‘urgently’ drop pre-departure COVID-19 test requirements for passengers traveling to the United States. The group pressed the White House to follow the lead of England which abandoned pre-travel testing for vaccinated passengers last month because the rules “could no longer be justified”.

The letter to White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients was signed by lobby group Airlines For America which represents some of the biggest airlines in the U.S. including American, Delta and United, as well as Southwest, jetBlue and Hawaiian Airlines.

“On behalf of the many sectors of the travel and aviation industries, we urgently request that the Administration remove the requirement for pre-departure testing for vaccinated passengers traveling to the United States,” the letter read.

“Doing so is justified by the pervasiveness of COVID cases in all 50 states, increased immunity and higher vaccination rates as well as new treatments.”

“Removing the requirement will greatly support the recovery of travel and aviation in the United States and globally without increasing the spread of COVID-19 and its variants.”

Pre-departure testing for international travel was first introduced in January 2021 and the rules were originally developed by the outgoing Trump administration as a way for the United States to lift its pandemic travel bans.

The Biden administration kept the testing rules but decided not to lift the travel bans for another 10 months and only relaxed entry requirements in November 2021.

Passengers initially had three days to get tested before departure but this time frame was tightened to just one day in December 2021 after the Omicron variant emerged.

But now that the Omicron variant is dominant in the U.S., the travel industry argues that pre-departure testing isn’t doing anything to protect against COVID-19. Instead, the rules are dissuading people from traveling internationally for fear of testing positive just before their return flight and then being left stuck in a foreign country.

Last year, airlines pumped up the value of pre-departure testing because they believed it could be used to lift even harsher travel restrictions. One joint study by American Airlines and British Airways concluded that a single test before departure had the potential to catch 99.6 per cent of positive COVID-19 cases.

That study, however, was conducted before more transmissible variants like Omicron emerged.

A recent analysis produced by Oxera and Edge Health of pre-departure testing rules in Finland and Italy suggested that they are “likely to be ineffective at stopping or even limiting the spread of the Omicron variant”.

The travel industry has argued that with no new variants on the horizon, pre-departure testing can be lifted but the system could be quickly reinstated should a new and potentially dangerous variant suddenly emerge.