Qantas has revealed more details about what international travel will be like when it restarts regular flights from Sydney to London and Los Angeles on November 14.
Passengers will need to prove they have been vaccinated and have returned a negative COVID-19 test before they fly, chief executive Alan Joyce said from the sidelines of a meeting of global airline bosses in Boston on Tuesday (AEDT).
Qantas boss Alan Joyce.CREDIT:JANIE BARRETT
Inbound travellers will also need to take two tests while undergoing seven days of home quarantine, he said.
The Morrison government said last week it would reopen the international border, and replace 14 days hotel quarantine with at-home isolation for vaccinated travellers, when states were 80 per cent vaccinated.
Mr Joyce said Qantas was working on a smartphone app passengers will use to upload and verify their vaccination status and test results, while another app will use geolocation and facial recognition to confirm travellers are complying with home quarantine requirements.
He said it will be up to travellers to declare they have somewhere to isolate when they arrive in Australia before boarding.
“There is a level of trust with this,” he said. “There will be an electronic arrival form that people have to fill in to come into the country which will have the details of where they’re staying... and there will be requirements for people on all of that to tell the truth and to be honest because they’re legal forms.”
Mr Joyce said he wanted quarantine requirements to be dropped altogether quickly as Australia hits its vaccination targets and opens up while allowing the virus to circulate.
“If there’s no more risk from a person coming in from the UK or US then it may be a testing regime - test and release – which is what a lot of countries are doing at the moment,” he said.
“We need to move from seven days to get tourists and to get business travellers to start travelling again.”