Covid and airports: fear of chaos and overflow of passengers | the Chronicle

The confluence of passengers from several flights at Palma de Mallorca airport generated chaos in the place a few days ago due to the large agglomeration of people who have become, amid the current context by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Faced with this fact, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned that this was a situation that could be repeated at other airports around the world and demanded that the authorities of the countries act in the material, with changes to streamline take-a-flight procedures.

According to an IATA report, before the pandemic, passengers spent an average of about an hour and a half on flight-related processes, such as check-in, security, border control, customs and retrieval of goods. luggage.

Meanwhile, current data has shown that the average time has increased by 100%, up to three hours, for which they demanded digital processes that verify the documentation relating to Covid-19 in order, in this way, to to waste less time on the airports.

What is most concerning, however, is what will happen when the influx of people reaches levels close to the pre-pandemic era.

As they pointed out, the time spent in the pre- and post-flight processes could reach five and a half hours when a 75% traffic volume is reached compared to 2019, and even up to eight hours of having the same passenger traffic before the arrival of the Covid.

“No one will tolerate so many hours of waiting for check-in or for border procedures. We need to automate the verification of vaccines and test certificates before traffic increases.”, underlined the Director General and CEO of IATA, Willie walsh.

To change this landscape, Walsh pointed out that “Governments need to accept digital certificate standards and align the processes to accept them. And they must act quickly“.