American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is pushing governments in the U.S. and the U.K. to permit travelers between New York and London to skip post-travel quarantine periods and instead accept the results of rapid, predeparture testing at the airport.
GBT (No. 3 on Travel Weekly's 2020 Power List) hopes to set up a pilot program on the New York-London route to capture data which it hopes will demonstrate that testing is an effective alternative to quarantines in slowing the spread of Covid-19. If the results of the program are promising, the project will be expanded to other routes.
Andrew Crawley
GBT chose London-New York to launch the program because, as chief commercial officer Andrew Crawley put it, "it is a massive air corridor" and one of the biggest international routes. It's also a city pair that multiple airlines fly, increasing the number of possible participating carriers, he added.
Crawley said he and his colleagues in the U.S. and the U.K. have been in touch with government officials in both countries and are already engaging with airline partners to get them on board. GBT is uniquely situated as a neutral party between airlines and governments, he said, and brings the added value of being a voice for business travelers.
It will provide free rapid Covid-19 tests for passengers booked on select flights between Newark and London Heathrow.
Current quarantine requirements could turn a two-day business trip into a four-week endeavor, with mandatory seclusion on both sides of the Atlantic. While there's general agreement that the possibility of quarantines has suppressed corporate travel, GBT argues that testing may in fact be more effective than quarantines in curtailing the pandemic.
"If you think about quarantining, it's a human exercise, which means that it will not be done with 100% compliance," he said. "We don't think everyone quarantines when they're supposed to quarantine. Some might not do the requisite number of days. Some might not do it at all. There is no data on who does it and who doesn't do it."
Testing isn't perfect, Crawley acknowledged, but "we think that replacing quarantine with testing everyone who gets on an airplane is as good a way, if not a better way, to mitigate the risk."
GBT would be supportive of travelers receiving rapid tests upon arrival, in addition to the pre-departure tests.
There are indications that the U.S. is "keen to do something," and on the U.K. side, there is a need to make traveling easier in order to facilitate trade as it prepares to leave the European Union.
This week, Covid-19 case numbers were spiking in countries around the world, including in the U.S. and the U.K.
"There will be spikes of transmissions, and those things need to be taken into account," Crawley said. "But that shouldn't stop us from putting trials in place."
He noted there is pent-up demand for travel, and there are people willing to travel regardless of spikes.
And he pointed to China, where the virus has been controlled and domestic travel is recovering nicely.
"People want to fly," Crawley said. "People want to do business. People want to get the economy moving. People understand that getting GDP back up requires deals to be done and clients to be seen."
If a pilot program were put in place between New York and London, it wouldn't matter whether people used the airports in those cities as points of transit. Regardless of transmission rates in their city of origin, each passenger would be subject to the same testing regimen.
GBT is stressing the urgency to establish a pilot program.
"All governments have got a lot on their plate at the moment," Crawley said. "But from an economic standpoint, we think balancing the health of the economy with the health of the nation is consistent with what we're proposing."