WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. aviation industry is committed to expanding the practice of asking passengers on flights to the United States for information that public health officials can use to track contacts during the pandemic.
An industry trade group said on Friday that carriers would hand over the information to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which could use it to contact passengers who may be exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Delta and United have been doing this since December. On Friday, an industry trade group said American, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue and Hawaiian will also ask passengers to provide their names, phone numbers, e-mail and physical addresses to the CDC.
Airlines have long resisted government efforts to demand that they collect information from passengers and provide it to health agencies. They said they had no information about passengers buying tickets from other vendors, such as online travel agencies. They also argued that gathering the information and making it available immediately to the government would be time consuming and would require expensive computer system upgrades.
The CEO of the commercial group Airlines for America, Nicholas Calio, said that operators hope that their voluntary information collection offer, along with testing passengers entering the United States, will lead the government to lift restrictions on international travel.
Although the orders are only voluntary, United Airlines said on Friday that since December most of its international customers have provided contact details.