The International Civil Aviation Organization expects to issue a second-phase Council on Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART) report late this month or in early November that will address uniform practices for Covid-19 testing for airline passengers, ICAO officials revealed Monday during the Flight Safety Foundation’s annual International Air Safety Summit. Aviation groups including the International Air Transport Association (IATA) hope new guidelines established by ICAO will act as a catalyst to harmonize testing protocols around the globe, answering calls to do away with demand-sapping quarantine requirements.
Participating in the summit’s first panel discussion along with Airport Council International (ACI) director-general Luis Felipe de Oliveira and Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (CANSO) head Simon Hocquard, IATA director-general Alexandre de Juniac praised the CART for its “well managed and exceptionally fast” reaction to the crisis following its establishment by ICAO in late April. In fact, it took about a month for the task force to publish its first set of guidelines and, although some raised questions about when and under what authority airlines and airports would adhere to the CART recommendations, all three of the panelists at the safety summit expressed satisfaction with the eventual outcome.
ICAO’s plan to release its phase-two set of guidelines for testing must have come as a welcome development in particular for IATA, which in a joint statement just last week with ACI Europe and Airlines for Europe complained of what they called a failure by the EU to pursue a uniform standard of testing to replace quarantines. Last Tuesday, European affairs ministers from EU states adopted a European Council recommendation on a coordinated approach to the restriction of free movement. But the industry groups said that the move falls “far short” of what they consider its mandate: “encouraging a restart of travel through effective coordination and proportionate, predictable, and non-discriminatory measures.”
“These shortcomings are a political failure,” the groups said. “The inability of the council to go beyond shallow coordination and establish a truly harmonized and workable framework is now beyond any doubt.”
In contrast, the ICAO task force proved a success in realizing its intent to coordinate action among aviation “stakeholders,” if not governments. “If we have the safest industry in terms of mass transportation it is not by chance,” said De Juniac. “It is because we are safety maniacs and we are implementing with rigorous discipline, which is very strict with no compromise based on a single standard…The point is to have a standard that is permanently reviewed, updated, and improved by the competent authorities and is implemented by all the actors around the table, whether it’s the NSPs, the airlines, the airports, everybody.”