U.S. Travel: Time to Drop Mask Mandate, Inbound Testing Rules for Vaccinated Travelers
byDaniel McCarthy/
The U.S. Travel Association is continuing its push to pressure the federal government to lift COVID travel restrictions next month.
In a letter to the new White House COVID response coordinator,obtained by Reuters旅行,美国呼吁结束测试要求uirement for inbound, fully vaccinated travelers, something that many experts see as the number one obstacle in way of the travel recovery, along with the end of the transportation mask mandate.
U.S. Travel CEO Roger Dow said in the letter that “it makes little sense to keep the pre-departure testing requirement in place for inbound air travelers when the U.S. government does not require negative tests at U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico points of entry,” he wrote.
Speaking to TMR this month, Lauri Reishus, the president and CEO of the Airlines Reporting Corporation, said that the testing requirement has a “对人们旅行的渴望的抑制作用” because of concerns of not being allowed in the U.S. if they do test positive, and because of having to secure a testing site abroad.
“It does just give you that sense of uncertainty and then one more thing to have to do when your coming preparing to come back to the U.S.,” she said.
目前,面具授权定于4月18日到期the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) extended it last month. The TSA could extend that end date again, though last month it issued a statement that said it plans to continue working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with other government agencies, to come up with a framework to wind down the rule.
That mandate has also caused issues for those who are tasked with enforcing it, mainly flight attendants, who have been the subject of an escalating number of verbal, and sometimes physical, attacks on airplanes. Fines for disobeying the mandate now exceeding more than $1 million across close to 4,000 incidents in the sky.
U.S. Travel wants an end to that mask rule on April 18, or an announcement of a timeline to repeal the mandate within 90 days.
两种规则的解除可能会全面实现的恢复,这使国际旅行可以促进国内旅行不断增长所需的增长。
Passenger numbers from the TSA show that while the industry is approaching 2019 levels, there is still a gap on most days—numbers from this week are still about 10% to 15% lower比2019年的同一时间相比,尽管与2021个数字相比,它们的增长次数要多。