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- Delta Air Lines introduces a voluntary contact tracing program for international arrivals in the United States.
- Passengers will be asked to provide their full name, email address, phone numbers, and U.S. address to send to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- CEO Ed Bastian announced in the same memo that the airline will fall short of its daily loss target of $ 10 million for the fourth quarter and will miss up to $ 4 million.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Delta is undertaking sky contact tracing as its latest initiative in the fight against COVID-19, becoming the first U.S. carrier to do so, the airline said Thursday.
International travelers to the United States will be asked to provide five pieces of information as part of the program that will assist health authorities in contact tracing efforts. Most of the information Delta looks for is already needed to book a flight and includes the passenger’s full name, primary and secondary phone numbers, US address, and email address.
Participation in the program is voluntary, but can help inform passengers if they have been exposed to the virus during their trip, as well as give local health authorities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more data to help. to stop the spread. For travelers using Delta’s new non-quarantined flights between Atlanta and Rome, acceptance of contact tracing will be mandatory upon their return to the United States.
The service will only be available to passengers traveling on flights operated by Delta with a final destination in the United States.
Passenger data will be transmitted to CDC and public health authorities through customs and border protection. Delta is currently working with CBP to operate its biometric check-in and boarding systems in place at its international hubs.
Delta flyers are already required to submit a health declaration for registration claiming they have no primary symptoms of COVID-19, including fever of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, feeling feverish, news persistent cough and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. .
A traveler positive for COVID-19 or even someone exposed to the virus must also wait 14 days from their diagnosis or exposure before boarding a Delta plane. Most airlines now have these declarations with Frontier Airlines even going so far as to carry out temperature checks on boarding.
However, asymptomatic passengers could spread the virus without knowing it. That’s why all major US airlines, including Delta, now require face masks on board and some will ban passengers who do not comply. Delta alone banned more than 400 passengers at the end of October, including the Navy SEAL that killed Osama bin Laden, Robert O’Neill.
A question of public health or to save the results?
Airlines are walking a fine line as confidence in air travel remains low amid fears of the virus and new lockdown orders. It took US airports seven months to see more than a million passengers in a single day, a feat it took another month to recur as the flyers flew out for Thanksgiving.
While all the measures the airlines have taken have made air travel safer, with low incidence rates among flight attendants as a key barometer, airlines have another reason for wanting to stop this pandemic: it is good for business.
Read more: Airline employees have lower COVID-19 rates than general population – and airline CEOs say it’s proof flying is safe
In the same Thursday note obtained by Reuters Announcing the airline’s new contract tracing program, CEO Ed Bastian said the airline would fall short of its daily consumption target of $ 10 million. Delta will instead see losses of between $ 12 million and $ 14 million per day in the fourth quarter, with Bastian directly citing an increase in cases across the country as the reason for the reduction in demand.
Airlines are also rushing to participate in airlifting the COVID-19 vaccine, because the sooner this pandemic is over, the sooner the journey will restart. Robert Walpole, vice president of Delta Cargo, told reporters in a briefing Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration had given permission to carry six times the normal amount of Pfizer vaccine on its largest aircraft, the Airbus A350s- 900 XWB and A330-300.
United Airlines sent the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine to the United States in late November as the drug company prepares for an expected emergency clearance from the FDA. Delta has carried out test flights and set up its vaccine processing infrastructure in key centers to prepare for the impending mass transport effort for drugs that end the pandemic.
Where some airlines have drawn the line during the pandemic is the blocking of the middle seats. JetBlue Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, and Southwest Airlines have all announced the end of their seat blocking policies, leaving Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines as the only two major U.S. airlines to block mid-seat seats through 2021.
Read more: United CEO argued it’s okay for airlines to keep burning tens of millions of dollars a day for months
Southwest’s decision to fill its planes follows a third-quarter loss of $ 1.2 billion, with CEO Gary Kelly saying the seat-blocking policy cost the airline $ 20 million in lost revenue during the summer.
Delta, however, recently announced an extension of its mid-seat blocking policy to March 30, 2021, but increased fares to account for the loss of capacity. And despite the increased losses in the fourth quarter, Bastian still expects Delta to break even for daily operations in the spring.
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