Alexandre de Juniac wants to know just how much anguish world governments – including Canada’s – intend to put people through before accepting that their pandemic protocols aren’t working and are simply causing hardship without curbing COVID-19?

Pointing to International Air Transport Association (IATA) stats that show that “the already tepid recovery in air travel demand came to a full stop in November” – in line with the second wave of the COVID-19 – the association’s director general and CEO says, “That’s because governments responded to new outbreaks with even more severe travel restrictions and quarantine measures.”

“This is clearly inefficient,” he blasted late last week, stating, “Such measures increase hardship for millions. Vaccines offer the long-term solution, (but) in the meantime, testing is the best way that we see to stop the spread of the virus and start the economic recovery. How much more anguish do people need to go through – job losses, mental stress – before governments will understand that?”

According to IATA, recovery in passenger demand, which had been slowing since the Northern hemisphere’s summer travel season, came to a halt in November 2020.

Total demand was down 70.3% compared to November 2019, virtually unchanged from the 70.6% year-to-year decline recorded in October. At the same time, capacity for the month was 58.6% below previous year levels and load factor fell 23 percentage points to 58% – a record low for the month.

International passenger demand in November was 88.3% below November 2019, slightly worse than the 87.6% year-to-year decline recorded in October. Capacity fell 77.4% below previous year levels, and load factor dropped 38.7 percentage points to 41.5%.

Recovery in domestic demand, which had been a “relative bright spot,” also stalled, with November domestic traffic down 41% compared to the prior year. Capacity was 27.1% down on 2019 levels and the load factor dropped 15.7 percentage points to 66.6%.

OH, CANADA!

Earlier in the week, the IATA boss took aim at Canada specifically over its last-minute implementation of a requirement for international arrivals to provide a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of arrival – a plan that lacked detail, implementation time for airlines, and stranded Canadians already out of country.

And while IATA advocates testing, it does so as a means to reduce or eliminate quarantine, which Canada explicitly did not do.

The result is a travel regimen that is “the worst of both worlds,” and another example of this country’s “draconian” border control regime, said de Juniac.

Many travel and tourism executives have echoed IATA’s sentiments, including Jamaica tourism minister Edmund Bartlett, who addressed Canadian and similar British testing protocols yesterday in an op-ed piece in the international trade publication eTurboNews.

“After what has been an uncharacteristically calamitous year for the travel and tourism sector in the Caribbean, any hope for a semblance of an uptick during the highly anticipated winter tourism season has effectively been crippled by the latest responses from two of the region’s major source markets for the region,” he said.

Bartlett offered understanding of “the need and responsibility of all governments to protect their citizens during this global health crisis,” but noted that many destinations, including Jamaica, have “made considerable efforts to successfully bolster their health and safety standards to insulate tourists from the risk of covid-19 infection.

“We consequently implore the governments of Canada and the UK to consider revising their latest one-size-fits-all COVID policy and instead take into consideration the peculiar circumstances and risk level associated with travelling to individual countries. Thoughtful consideration to this suggestion will give tourism recovery the push-start that the sector so desperately needs. The economic livelihoods of millions of people depend on it,” he said.

In Canada, ACTA president Wendy Paradis said the new requirements were causing chaos for travel agents.

“ACTA is calling on the government to reconsider this new mandatory requirement that does not remove or reduce the 14-day quarantine. A far better solution for Canadians and the industry would be to test on arrival,” she said, adding, “ACTA has been advocating to the government for months to work with industry to develop a well thought out, science -based program for rapid testing that would keep Canadians safe and reduce the 14-day quarantine.

“We had seen some progress with the pilot projects taking place across the country in late 2020 with testing in Canadian airports… but on a voluntary basis and it does not at this time replace the new testing requirement in destination, which we believe would be a far better solution.”

WestJet president and CEO Ed Sims said that after the measures were announced on Dec. 31 (and ultimately made effective as of Jan. 7), that the airline has seen “significant reductions in new bookings and unprecedented cancellations.”

As a result, he said on Friday that the airline would be forced to lay off 1,000 employees to reflect a 30 percent capacity cut in February and March that will include pulling 160 domestic departures from its schedule – a move he blamed squarely on the government’s “incoherent and inconsistent” policy.

“Regrettably, this new policy leaves us with no other option but to again place a large number of our employees on leave, while impacting the pay of others,” he said.