Speaking on A Current Affair tonight, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said that in the future you will need to prove that you have been vaccinated for COVID-19 before boarding one of their flights.
#BREAKING: QANTAS CEO confirms that proof that you’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19 will be compulsory for international air travel onboard his aircraft. #9ACA pic.twitter.com/dhk3Hsnxn9
— A Current Affair (@ACurrentAffair9) November 23, 2020
In the interview, Joyce told host Tracy Grimshaw that international travelers will have to be vaccinated before boarding a flight to Australia. The same goes for people leaving the country. But whether it would be necessary for domestic travel is still unknown at this stage.
“Alan when there is a vaccine, are you going to require all of your passengers to be vaccinated before they get on a plane?” Grimshaw asked Joyce in the interview.
“Yeah, we are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say for international travelers that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft,” Joyce replied.
“Whether you need that domestically, we will have to see what happens with COVID-19 in the market. But certainly for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity,” he added.
This comes after Joyce revealed that Australians could be allowed to travel overseas in the new year.
“We’ve always planned that from July next year we’ll start reactivating our long haul international aircraft, and get a lot of our people back to work, and that still looks like the plan,” he said.
“The news about the vaccines are very positive, which I think is great for that border opening plan.”
Similarly to how Australia is opening its borders to New Zealand, the way forward before a vaccine could be through travel-bubbles with other countries.
At the Qantas October AGM, chairman Richard Goyder said that they would be keeping an eye on potential new travel bubbles.
“By early next year, we may find that Korea, Taiwan and various islands in the Pacific are top Qantas destinations while we wait for our core international markets like the US and UK to re-open,” Goyder said.
