usatoday | Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian has joined the chorus of travel-industry executives coming out strongly against a government proposal to require mandatory COVID-19 tests for passengers on flights within the United States.
"I think it'd be a horrible idea for a lot of reasons,'' Bastian said Tuesday in an interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow.
Bastian said testing won't keep domestic passengers safer and will set the travel industry's recovery back by at least another year. Airlines saw cancellations and bookings spike after mandatory testing for international flights to the U.S. was announced in January.
Bastian saidrequiring domestic travelers to get tested would divert about 10% of the country's already scarce testing resources, given that U.S. airlines are carrying about 1 million passengers a day on average as travel picks up. There were several days during the holidays whenpassenger counts topped 1 million, setting a pandemic record, but the numbers have since retreated, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
Taking testing away from those "truly in need'' would be a "terrible decision,'' he said. And given delays in processing results, he believes it would be a "logistical nightmare."
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly, who had already criticized the idea as "wholly impractical," took his case directly to President Joe Biden in a letter dated Tuesday.
"On behalf of the management and unions at Southwest Airlines, we respectfully ask your administration to refrain from imposing any federal mandate to require a pre-departure COVID-19 test for air travel within the United States,'' the letter says. "We believe such a mandate would be counterproductive, costly, and have serious unintended consequences, including for millions of people who have travel needs but may not have access to testing resources and for the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on a stable air travel industry.''
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