EASA COVID-19 Aviation Health Safety Protocol
 

EASA has now published its COVID-19 Aviation Health Safety Protocol https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/def...gers_final.pdf

However, as I told them, airlines have to consider supply and demand - and I really cannot see many passengers wishing to fly whilst such measures are in place. Travelling was awful enough at many airports before COVID-19, but now it'll be almost intolerable for many.

As for the daftness of 14 day UK quarantine,,,,,,

The 14 day quarantine can work IF it is vigorously enforced. I notice Guernsey in the Channel Islands has had no new cases for nearly 3 weeks and they enforce a strict 14 day quarantine. Easier there, but it shows it can work if properly applied. I doubt it will be enforced with the same standards here in the UK. Nice try though.

'In the context of these measures, an increase in cases of unruly or disruptive passengers should be expected, either prior to departure or in-flight. This may be due to passengers not wishing to sit next to each other or accusing each other of not following the rules. There is a strong potential for conflict if it is not managed properly. In the worst-case,panic could become quite a serious threat to flight safety –for example if there are significant displacements within the cabin. To address this, operators are invited to consider the raised likelihood of these factors within their procedures and training.'

Oh, what a joyous prospect the already dire airport and awful flying experience is going to become especially given the prospect of the above - and that's only the good news as per page 4 of the document. What horrors lurk in the rest of the document?

Well, for start the airport should ensure that Bars, Pubs and sales of duty free alcohol are stopped until the crisis is over. I almost certain that won't happen though.

Yep, how can a 14 day quarantine possibly work....Meantime in Aus and Nz.

I think the issue is not so much whether a 14 day quarantine can work but why implement it at some point in the future rather than at the start of the lockdown?

I agree there, the horse has bolted, grown old and been put down now.

Long haul travel
 

I made a long haul flight two days ago. I am now in a country that requires me to self quarantine for 14 days.

If only there was a way to keep the empty, stress free airports and empty flights with rows of spare seats without the damage to businesses and livelihoods that has already happened and of course will happen. It made travel much less stressful.

On a more serious note, everyone in the industry has my utmost sympathy and I hope you can get through this with your sanity and finances intact.

Sadly I think we all know it is going to be some time before air travel gets back to ‘normal’.

BV

What are you all crying about?! If you hate flying so much why are you posting on a pilots website? This is positive news, procedures are being put in place to get us all back flying. Great stuff, let's hope its a roaring success. And as for the doom mongers constantly saying people won't fly under these restrictions just take a look at the photos of beaches around the country this week, people would go on holiday tomorrow if you let them. So how about you lot stay at home and let the rest of us get on with living our lives.

Rather an intemperate post?

Although airlines and pilots need to get going again, if measures are too draconian they won't have any passengers. Certainly that's the view of the travel industry - they can be as optimistic as they like, but the simple fact is that current indications are that families won't be travelling soon. Neither will the over '50s grey pound travellers.

It's important to have the opportunity available in the first place. Whatever measures are in place, when the government doesn't allow you to go anywhere near the airport - none of them matters. Once the opportunity is there (and it almost is, it's a matter of another couple of weeks for Europe to open up), there will be a couple of groups of people who will lead the recovery. Think essential travellers, students, some business travellers, those visiting friends and relatives, those who already have a vacation booked and aren't too scared to go ahead with it or simply don't want to lose the money... Once they are up and flying, their example will influence their peer groups. Any human is influenced by those who surround them. When your mates John, Steve, Katie and Tracie have already travelled somewhere and are still alive and kicking, you'll inevitably start thinking that it's probably not too scary and perhaps worth trying for yourself too.

As much as the proposed measures add some extra hassle to travel, people will start treating them as the necessary evil and an acceptable tradeoff for being able to go about your business. Just as airport security hasn't deferred anyone from travelling abroad yet, wearing a mask and using hand sanitizer won't either. And, hopefully, all that will not be necessary someday in the next months or years, so you likely won't spend the rest of your life doing it. Hence, let it be and let it bring us a step closer to practising our awesome profession once again.

:ok:
+1

Bidule

Everyone I've talked to, from peers to elderly parents (own and those of my GF) cannot wait to start travelling again.

My mom is booked on a trip to Tirol in August, a trip which will be taken by bus. She's adamant that if the tour company does not cancel the trip, she'll be onboard that bus. Her travel companion will be her brother, and they're both on the dark side of 70.

I had a chat with both of them, and they are of the opinion "if it happens, it happens and it's equally likely to happen at home as it is abroad".

All my friends are desperate to resume their vacation schedule, which usually involves a trip to the Med in the summer and to Asia or the Alps (or both) in the winter, interspersed with short trips to e.g. London, Paris, Barcelona, Malaga, Mallorca, Rome or New York.

Colleagues, including self, are eager to resume business travel so that we can interact properly with our colleagues, customers and suppliers at facilities around the world. If there's anything this virus has shown, it is that conducting meetings via phones and videolinks are falling desperately short of being equally productive, efficient and producing results of the same quality. The amount of meetings we've had has shot up to an almost intolerable level, but instead of settling or aligning on issues, the most common result is the need to conduct several follow-up meetings to achieve the necessary result.

Therefore I'm of the firm conviction that once procedures are in place and borders open again, passengers will avail themselves of the opportunity en masse.

The problem in the near future will be whether every airport/country obeys the said rules and for how long they keep to them. You only have to look at what happened to the Russian Airbus Sharm el Sheikh incident.

oh I dunno. I turned 60 a couple weeks ago... I’d be off like a fecking brides nightie, given the opportunity

The UK quarantine is a political response to media pressure to be seen to be doing something, and it is way too late to impose it now because the virus is already out and about in the community. The only impact will be to further handicap recovery.

If the Govt was to take a risk-based approach it could rapidly come to a different conclusion. I don't share Beagle's view of the travelling experience - there are a lot of people who will travel if permitted, despite the temporary inconveniences, but the quarantine rules are likely to tip the balance against it, especially for those unable to work from home (you would need to use an additional 14 days leave).

Look at it this way. Passengers arriving via an airport and airline using the EASA or equivalent protocols will have been temperature-checked, quizzed on their health and potential contacts with infected persons, made to wear a mask throughout their travel, subjected to physical distancing for as much of the journey as possible (including boarding and deplaning), access to hand gels and disinfectant wipes, aircraft disinfected every day, health checks on arrival, no-touch procedures for document checks, enhanced cleaning regimes in flight as well as in the terminal, etc. The only real risk is therefore the arrival in country of someone who is asymptomatic, but they are highly unlikely to have infected anyone else on the way. The use of contact cards also facilitates the tracing action that other countries have used to good effect.

By comparison anyone can wander into the tube system in London (where around 1/6 of the population have apparently had the virus) without any checks, even if they are symptomatic, and there is only a recommendation to use a face covering. Physical distancing is well-reported as being honoured more in the breach than the observance. The logical conclusion is that you are at greater risk of catching or spreading the virus using land public transport than you are when flying. 14 day quarantine for people using tubes, trains and buses?

Yes I am in total agreement but nothing is making any sense anymore. Apparently if you are under the age of 40 you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than dying of Covid19.

Look at his location. He's either a parody of a brexiteer or an actual brexiteer. Neither are likely to have anything relevant to bring to the discussion. Leave the scientific discussion of viral transmission to experts, not to a bunch of aviation people.
On that note, I found it interesting to see that IATA has decided there's no need to keep middle seats empty, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4be4b330e4.jpg

Since around 50 dies each year of lightning strike in the UK and there don't seem to be any UK official death statistics by age in the lower age groups that could be possible. However most of us know the precautions necessary and take them to avoid being struck by lightning. Like don't stand in an open field holding a metal pole while there is a thunderstorm overhead. Are you argumenting that poeple should'nt take similar precautions to avoid getting CoVid19.

There will always be a large amount of people that are not smart enough to survive when something different arrives. They have no experience of that what have worked before no longer works because the world have changed. These are the people the smarter ones send over the top first. Others sit back and wait to see what happens to that lot. A problem is that those that go on as before bring the disease home to them who are carefull. Take the analogy of going for a walk and you meet people that don't care about social distancing. You just know that if they are careless when you meet them they will be just as careless in other aspects of dealing with the spread.
Always choose a route where you are the one that controls the distance. Always choose an airline that has taken more precautions than the absolute minimum that won't cost them much.
Smart travellers will make up their mind about what amount of precautions is necessary and will choose an airline that supplys them. However I'm not saying an airline, even a low fares one, couldn't cater for both. Instead of a class divider curtain they could have a CoVid19 precaution divider curtain. In front you get free middle seats, cleaning of toilets between each customer and cleaning of cabin between each flight. Behind, for a bit less money, you get nightly cleaning and shared armrests.