RIYADH: The pandemic has significantly changed the air transport industry, with new regulations and travel requirements in place.
Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Civil Aviation and other aviation institutions announced a new framework to ease travel requirements at the Future Aviation Forum in Riyadh.
Talking to Arab News on the sidelines of the event, Jean-Marc Bourreau, partner at Consulum Aviation, said the global effect of the pandemic shaped the policy in question, but it is meant to stay and help evolve the future of aviation on a global scale.
The new policy will be formally presented at the 41st ICAO General Assembly later in 2022 to receive approval from member states.
“This is what is going to fuel Vision 2030. How can we talk about the future 2030, if we are not able to propose solutions to get out of the current crisis?” Bourreau added.
The proposed policy came on the heels of the findings of a recent study conducted by YouGov, which showed that uncertainty about health requirements has been discouraging people to proceed with their travel plans.
Future of aviation
“The policy is about the harmonization of air travel, which means that instead of thinking of each country, communicating on its own regarding health requirements for travel, let’s put together a platform that will allow the swift communication between all countries regarding what the requirements are,” Bourreau said.
The policy is meant to stay and help evolve the future of aviation on a global scale.
The platform will allow travelers and industry members to access all the information needed for traveling by inputting some data and the system will automatically inform users about the requirements.
“If I am coming from country A, I have the nationality of country C, I am traveling from country D to country E, and the system will tell you what regulation you need to be complying with. And this will be the reference. You will not have to go again to a large number of websites or platforms or information, because everything will be there,” Bourreau explained.
Bourreau is cooperating with global institutions such as ICAO, WHO, and ACI as well as the Kingdom to help in the recovery of the global aviation industry.
“Once we start to have a base for what we wanted to propose, we started working with other organizations, with the technical members of different organizations that are involved in international air transports,” he added.
Bourreau explained that the future of aviation is about connecting all the countries and creating that platform will be a big step toward that goal.
He also lauded the Kingdom's efforts in helping boost the aviation industry.
