WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. airline industry has promised to expand the practice of asking passengers on flights to the United States for information that public health officials can use for contact detection during the pandemic.
An industry trade group said Friday that the carrier will hand over the information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which it can use to make contact with passengers who may be exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Delta and United have been doing it since December. A commercial trade group said Friday that Americans, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue and Hawaiian will also ask passengers to make their names, phone numbers, email address and physical addresses available to the CDC.
The airlines have long resisted the government’s efforts to require them to collect passenger information and provide it to health care providers. They said they do not have the information on passengers buying tickets from other sellers such as online travel agencies. They also argued that it would be very time consuming to gather the information and make it available to the government immediately and that it would require expensive upgrades to computer systems.
Airlines for America trade group chief executive Nicholas Calio said airline representatives hope their offer of voluntary information gathering, coupled with testing passengers entering the U.S., will lead the government to lift restrictions on international travel.
Although the requests are only voluntary, United Airlines said Friday that most of its international customers have provided contact details since December.