Hundreds of posters and digital displays promote distancing, the PA system lights up every five minutes in multiple languages with announcements on distancing rules, and trained agents walk the halls to enforce them. The UK government, though, has yet to endorse it.īy submitting your email you are agreeing to Nine Publishing'sĪt Frankfurt airport, Europe's fourth-busiest, check-in counters, baggage-claim areas, and boarding-pass and security checkpoints have been redesigned to ensure people stay at least 1.5 meters apart, with markings on the floor indicating the required distance. Heathrow, Europe's busiest hub, is testing a thermal detection system intended to identify people with the virus, technology that's been used in Asia for years. Instead, Holland-Kaye says, airports would do better to screen passengers for covid-19 at the terminal entrance. "That's not something we can keep doing until a vaccine comes along." Enforcing a two-metre rule could reduce the airport's capacity to 20 per cent of its usual level, he says. Keeping 400 people-the capacity of many jumbo-jets-two meters from one another "means a queue of close to a kilometre, which fills up the departure hall and out into the car park," says John Holland-Kaye, CEO of London's Heathrow airport. And if implemented long-term, executives say they could do almost as much damage to airline and airport profits as remaining closed altogether.
Photo: EPAĪs governments draw up plans to get the world flying again, proposals aimed at keeping passengers safe are often confusing and contradictory-for instance keeping people from sitting next to each other at the departure gate but cramming them six or eight abreast for hours during a flight. "Going through an airport, the whole travel experience, will be as enjoyable as open-heart surgery," says Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, whose workers wear disposable gowns and safety visors that wouldn't look out of place in a covid-19 ward.Ī personnel member cleans a gate as another member of Charles de Gaulle airport personnel wears a protective face mask and visor in Terminal 2 of Charles de Gaulle international airport in Roissy near Paris. As airlines crawl out of virus-lockdown mode, passengers can expect it to be even more of a bummer, with new temperature check points, lines of distancing people stretching into the parking lot, and plexiglass barriers isolating baggage clerks, baristas, and other staffers.įace masks and gloves will be de rigueur, disinfectants will be everywhere, and even though many processes will be automated to minimise human interaction, industry officials predict travel times will have to increase to accommodate the hygiene-inspired precautions. Photo: AAPįor as long as most of us can remember, air travel hasn't been a whole lot of fun. A member of Charles de Gaulle airport personnel wears a protective face mask and a visor in Terminal 2 of Charles de Gaulle international airport in Roissy, north of Paris.
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