Faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, some sectors highly impacted by the health crisis have no other solutions but to adapt. This is the case of the air sector. This March 11, Air France initiates their “health pass” test. In concrete words, this digital health pass will be tested for 4 weeks on long-haul flights to overseas territories, departing from Paris CDG to Pointe-à-Pitre, in Guadeloupe, and Fort-de-France, in Martinique.
Therefore, will this kind of “health pass” be standard? Will it be necessary to have one of these “health passes” to travel by plane in the coming months? Invited on RMC this March 11, 2021 French Minister of Transports Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said this tool could foreshadow a necessary pass to travel by plane. “It could be foreshadowing or anticipating, anyway a life-size experiment of what could be tomorrow’s future travel pass or health pass”, he said.
According to Djebbari, this system “enables to make taking documents, scanning them and identifying them easier. It prevents frauds, it unclogs queues” at boarding and arrival of each flight.
As the International Air Transport Association (IATA) works on a digital pass, the minister said “there will certainly be health protocols imposing to get tested or have a vaccination certificate” to board a plane. The “health pass” tested by Air France is expected to make upcoming plane journeys easier.
And what about mandatory vaccine to board a plane? “This discussion is not happening yet on a political level”, he answered on RMC.
