While Air China is increasing its routes to European destinations for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic – including a few days ago the Athens airport on the connection with Shanghai, following the previous decision to relax travel restrictions in China – the clouds are also thickening this time over European airports.
The rise in the number of coronavirus cases in China, combined with the lack of official information that comes with the dropper from the Chinese authorities, is alarming Europe, where it has already sounded the alarm with new, “key messages” – which, as the competent Commissioner has announced Health – will be addressed by Brussels at EU level, for European travelers planning to travel to China, for those entering the EU from China. as well as for airline and airport staff.
At the same time, according to newmoney.gr, countries such as Spain, Italy, France or Israel have already announced measures for a negative test or vaccination certificate for travelers from China, which adds new data, for a again in recent months, in air transport amid the given uncertainty due to the war in Ukraine, energy and increased fuel costs. In fact, France appealed to the rest of the EU states to adopt the policy of negative Covid-19 tests from Chinese travelers.
It is no coincidence that the official announcement from the Airports Council International of Europe (ACI Europe) expresses its displeasure with the initiatives of “certain states within the EU and internationally to unilaterally impose health-related travel requirements, including systematic tests before the departure or arrival of travelers from China’.
As ACI Europe notes, these unilateral actions are in stark contrast to all the experience and evidence they have gathered over the past three years amid Covid 19: “The ineffectiveness of international travel restrictions in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and its multiple variants of concern has been unequivocally recognized by both the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO),” it states.
The testing of travelers from China and/or the imposition of other restrictions on travelers from the country are neither scientifically justified nor based on actual evidence of the resulting risk as reported in recent days by the ECDC.”
ACI Europe considers that, indeed, the member states of the E.U. they should remain vigilant, yet focus more on identifying potential new variants. “Such an approach, as EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides urged in a letter sent earlier this week to member states, does not require screening travelers but can be achieved by means such as testing sewage from airports . We are once again plunging into a patchwork of unjustified and uncoordinated travel restrictions, which have no basis in scientific data,” commented Mr. Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI EUROPE.
The industry’s concern, at the moment, is not unwarranted as European aviation still has a long way to go to fully recover to 2019 figures: According to the European Organization for the Safety of European Airports Eurocontrol, 2022 was the year where European aviation weathered the storm of the pandemic, with the year ending with 9.3 million flights (3.1 million more than 2021) but the number remains lower than 2019, with 1.8 million fewer flights.
The figures represent 83% of 2019’s movement, which was achieved despite the rise of the Omicron variant at the start of the year and the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, which continues to have a huge socio-economic impact on all aspects of the European economy, including of air transport. Above the European average is the performance of Greek airports, with the regional airports in the top tourist destinations having returned and in some cases have exceeded their pre-pandemic numbers, while the recovery is slower in the two largest urban centers of the country, in Athens and Thessaloniki.
