John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s Chief Executive has described social distancing at airports as “impossible”.

He also called for passengers to be screened in a bid to boost demand for air travel.

He told PA news agency that:

“Social distancing does not work in any form of public transport, let alone aviation.The constraint is not about how many people you can fit on a plane, it will be how many people you can get through an airport safely.

“If you’ve ever been on holiday from Gatwick, you cannot imagine going through there and socially distancing in the summer.

“It’s just physically impossible to socially distance with any volume of passengers in an airport. The same applies with trains and tube stations.So we need a better solution, which means that in a few months’ time, when the disease is under control and with a low risk of infection, we can make it as low risk as possible for people to fly.”

Social distancing on planes would reduce capacities by more than 50% and mean “prices would shoot up”,he added

Mr Holland-Kaye set out several alternative “practical” steps which could be implemented to give passengers “confidence that they are safe to fly”.

He said: “I think that’ll be a package of measures including some form of screening. That might be temperature screening as you see in Asian airports.

“It will include probably people having less contact with each other, so probably wearing masks when they travel. Less contact between passengers and airport workers.

“It will include fantastic hygiene in the airport with sanitisers and deep cleaning and things like that.

“I think that package of measures – once we have got the disease under control – will be enough to get people flying again.”

Talking to Aviation magazine he said that until there is a cure or vaccine for Covid-19, it is likely that travel between countries “will only happen if each considers the other to be low risk”.

He argued that the UK “needs to be at the forefront” of a new biosecurity standard for air travel as it has one of the world’s largest aviation sectors.

It is “critical” that people travel “without the need for quarantine” to accelerate the recovery from the pandemic, Mr Holland-Kaye claimed.

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