WASHINGTON (AP) – The US airline industry is committed to expanding the practice of asking passengers on flights to the United States for information that public health officials could use to track contacts during a pandemic.
An industry trade group said on Friday that carriers would pass the information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which could use it to contact passengers who could be exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Delta and United have been doing this since December. On Friday, an industry trade group said American, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue and Hawaiian will also ask passengers to provide the CDC with their name, phone numbers, email address and physical addresses.
Airlines have long resisted government efforts to ask them to gather passenger information and provide it to health agencies. They said they have no information about passengers buying tickets from other vendors, such as online travel agencies. They also argued that collecting information and making it available to the government immediately would be time consuming and costly to improve IT systems.
Airlines for America CEO Nicholas Calio said carriers hope their offer of voluntary information collection, along with testing of passengers entering the US, will lead the government to lift restrictions on international travel.
Although the requests are only voluntary, United Airlines said on Friday that since December, most of its international customers have provided contact details.