On Monday, Mr. Salvatore Sciacchitano, ICAO Council
President, spoke to delegates attending the IATA AGM in Boston,
his first official mission and first public address in person
since taking office on 1 January 2020.
Mr. Sciacchitano used the forum to praise the U.S. for relaxing
its entry requirements for vaccinated travellers,
and encouraged governments around the world to approach air travel
entry requirements on the basis of practical and evidence based
approaches to manage risk.
He also confirmed that the Council Aviation
Recovery Taskforce (CART), working in close collaboration with the
WHO and the aviation industry, has updated its recommendations
with regards to the certification issues surrounding COVID19 test
results and vaccination certificates. Those updates are expected
to be published "soon".
"The real issue is that there are recommendations,
with a risk-based approach that could help restart, but
unfortunately the measures are not implemented in a harmonized
way," said Mr. Sciacchitano. "There is an issue of standardisation
and certificates. This is an issue on which we are working on. We
have adopted international standards for vaccine certificates. We
use the platform already existing for e-passports, the same
platform. As you know, you can use e-passports in any country and
these passports can be read and recognised by any country. Well,
the same system is needed for certificates of vaccination. We have
already adopted a standard, we are working on interoperability and
we hope that this standard and implementation will be widely
implemented by beginning of next year."
The ICAO will host a virtual High-level Conference
on COVID19 (HLCC 2021) from 12 to 22 October 2021 under the theme
of “One Vision for Aviation Recovery, Resilience and
Sustainability beyond the Global Pandemic”.
The conference will be an opportunity to promote
and strengthen collective efforts to harmonize - a keyword at the
IATA AGM - measures and risk management strategy through the
implementation of the recommendations by the ICAO CART.
“There is far too much complexity in the way
borders are re-opening. The potential for a global re-connect
could be hijacked by bureaucracies favoring stand-alone
“made-at-home” solutions over approaches that work across
borders,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General. “The most
important result that the ICAO HLCC could achieve is bringing
commitment from states to reduce the evolving complexity. The
second most important achievement would be recognition that we
must return to normal and the production of harmonized guidance on
how to do so, including the sunsetting of measures.”
See also:
What is the IATA Travel Pass, and what does it mean for
travellers, airlines and the global travel industry? Exclusive
video interview with Vinoop Goel.
See latest
Travel Industry News,
Video
Interviews,
Pictures,
Podcasts
and other
news regarding:
IATA,
ICAO.
Headlines: |
|
|