Airline industry pushes United States to standardize COVID travel credentials

Airline and business groups are asking the Biden administration to develop temporary credentials for travelers to show they have been tested and vaccinated for COVID-19 — a step the airline industry hopes will help revive travel.

Many different groups and countries are working on developing such vaccine passports, aimed at allowing more travel.

But airlines executives worry that a piecemeal, regional approach to these COVID travel passports wouldl cause confusion and result in none them being widely accepted.

“It is crucial to establish uniform guidance” and “the U.S. must be a leader in this development,” more than two dozen groups said in a letter to White House coronavirus-response coordinator Jeff Zients.

But the groups — which include the main U.S. and international airline trade organizations, airline labor unions and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — said vaccination shouldn’t be a requirement for domestic or international travel.

The White House did not comment.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations’ aviation arm are working on the type of information to include in a COVID travel credential. The airline industry groups are particularly interested in having the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention take a leading role, figuring that would lend legitimacy to the credentials.

In its new guidelines for fully vaccinated people, the CDC says they can — without face masks — meet other vaccinated people and visit unvaccinated people in a single household who are at low risk for severe disease. But the health agency still recommends against travel.

“Every time that there is a surge in travel, we have a surge in cases in this country,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the federal agency’s director.

Walensky pointed out that many variants of COVID-19 now spreading in the United States started in other countries. Still, she held out the possibility that, with more data, the CDC might soon approve of travel by vaccinated people.

Airlines have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Despite a partial recovery, U.S. airlines are still losing $150 million a day, according to the Airlines for America trade group.

In the United States, the number of people traveling by air remains down nearly 60% so far this year compared to 2019 — the latest normal, pre-pandemic year. Most of those people are flying within the United States.

Airlines are counting on widespread vaccinations to boost travel and for vaccine passports to especially give a boost to highly lucrative international flying.