It is long overdue and a necessary that Governments and Health Authorities will commence with recovery plans that will allow Airlines to resume operations, much like Airworthiness Directives (ADs).
These Aircovidness Directive will assist in minimizing and preventing risks of Covid-19 pandemic, even though numbers are very low as it is IAW IATA study [1]
These plans should include regulations and explicit instructions and must be coordinated with authorities around the world to ensure that conflicting ADs are not issued and we have a unified plan dealing with this global pandemic.
An operator that does not comply with these Aircovidness Directives or will have a large number of infected passengers or employees, will not be considered Aircovid, thus will seize operations until all mandatory directives are complied with.
We need to lobby governments to stop Irrational decision that are not based on medical information and start steering us in the correct path that is based on solid and rational information.
One of our previous posts Covid-19 Beacon of Behavior stated that "IAW Aviation industry perception of its role within our communities, we are serving as a beacon of good behavior to our communities first and foremost and to the entire world secondly"
This is yet another opportunity to serve as a beacon for best practices for coping with Covid-19 pandemic for all industries.
Lets lead the way towards living alongside this pandemic until a vaccine is available and we can get back to the new form of normalcy.
"We are all in this Together"
Research Points to Low Risk for COVID-19 Transmission Inflight
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) demonstration of the low incidence of inflight COVID-19 transmission with an updated tally of published cases.
Since the start of 2020 there have been 44 cases of COVID-19 reported in which transmission is thought to have been associated with a flight journey (inclusive of confirmed, probable and potential cases). Over the same period some 1.2 billion passengers have traveled.
“The risk of a passenger contracting COVID-19 while onboard appears very low. With only 44 identified potential cases of flight-related transmission among 1.2 billion travelers, that’s one case for every 27 million travelers. We recognize that this may be an underestimate but even if 90% of the cases were un-reported, it would be one case for every 2.7 million travelers. We think these figures are extremely reassuring. Furthermore, the vast majority of published cases occurred before the wearing of face coverings inflight became widespread,” said Dr. David Powell, IATA’s Medical Advisor.
New insight into why the numbers are so low has come from the joint publication by Airbus, Boeing and Embraer of separate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research conducted by each manufacturer in their aircraft. While methodologies differed slightly, each detailed simulation confirmed that aircraft airflow systems do control the movement of particles in the cabin, limiting the spread of viruses. Data from the simulations yielded similar results:
Aircraft airflow systems, High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, the natural barrier of the seatback, the downward flow of air, and high rates of air exchange efficiently reduce the risk of disease transmission on board in normal times.
The addition of mask-wearing amid pandemic concerns adds a further and significant extra layer of protection, which makes being seated in close proximity in an aircraft cabin safer than most other indoor environments
Source: [1] IATA website
