IATA's Alexandre de Junia lashed out at governments around the world for their approach to dealing with new Covid-19 outbreaks. Photo Credit: Getty Images/rarrarorro
In a statement, IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac blamed what
he called the "full stop" in global travel demand recovery on
governments because of their decisions to respond to new virus outbreaks
with additional travel restrictions and quarantine measures.
"This is clearly inefficient," de Juniac said. "Such measures
increase hardship for millions. Vaccines offer the long-term solution.
In the meantime, testing is the best way that we see to stop the spread
of the virus and start economic recovery. How much more anguish do
people need to go through — job losses, mental stress — before
governments will understand that?"
On 07 January, the trade organisation reported that global air travel
demand in 2020 was off 70.3% year over year in November, nearly
unchanged from October's 70.6% year-over-year decline. International
demand was down 88.3% in November compared with 2019, while demand for
domestic flights in countries around the world was down 41%.
Though the statistics are for November, de Juniac's remarks were
almost surely impacted by more recently imposed government restrictions,
as well.
Earlier this month, for example, Canada added a testing mandate on
top of existing entry bans and quarantine requirements. And late
December 2020, countries around the world implemented new bans and
restrictions on entry from the UK after a more easily transmitted strain
of Covid-19 emerged there.
Source: Travel Weekly