Europe's airports face an unprecedented operational challenge due to Corona's measures
Airports Council International has warned of chaos at European airports during the summer holiday season this year due to the repercussions of inspections and verifications linked to the Covid pandemic.
The council said in a press release that as travel restrictions continue to be eased in Europe and elsewhere, and thanks to the improved situation in dealing with the pandemic, more and more people are expected to pass through European airports and passenger traffic will almost triple from 47 million passengers in May. to 125 million next August.
The board noted that while this is still below pre-pandemic levels, managing this increase poses an "unprecedented operational challenge".
This is due to space restrictions associated with social distancing measures, which will reduce available physical capacity and increase passenger processing times.
Airlines expect air traffic to be highly concentrated during peak periods this summer.
Another challenge is "multiple and varied" verification processes, where travelers are forced to undergo additional checks to verify Covid test certificates, passenger locator forms, and quarantine documents.
European Airports Council International said that "audit is usually carried out by public authorities, airlines and/or ground handling companies" as it "varies by point of origin and destination, based on rules that remain uneven and largely unstable across Europe." .
In addition, it is carried out several times, both at departure and on arrival, most often manually - which leads to inefficiencies and a significant slowdown in the processing time of passengers.
The organization urged European governments to adopt and implement the proposed revised EU Council Recommendation for intra-EU travel, published by the European Commission on May 31.
This "must ensure consistency with the EU travel recommendation recently adopted by the Council and thus ensure that travel restrictions are lifted for vaccinated travelers as well as for travelers who have been tested and recovered," the statement said.
Countries should also ensure that they are ready to “issue the joint and inter-EU digital certificates of the Covid vaccine by 1 July at the latest, and that they also recognize, along with the European Commission, digital and manual certificates issued by the EU’s neighboring countries as well as other third countries that are easing restrictions.” imposed on travel with Europe.
The Council urged European governments to "ensure that Covid checks are not repeated during travel (integrating departures and arrivals at airports) and that the inspections are carried out as close as possible to the passenger process (particularly through online check-in).
He also called on governments to deploy a sufficient number of airport staff to ensure that manual checks and border controls for travelers are not delayed.
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