Heathrow Airport CEO John Holland-Kaye has said that a common international standard of airport safety measures is required within a month, however warns that social distancing at airport won’t work.
In a column published in the Daily Telegraph, he wrote: “Forget social distancing – it won’t work in aviation or any other form of public transport, and the problem is not the plane, it is the lack of space in the airport.
“Just one jumbo jet would require a queue a kilometre long.
“It’s just physically impossible to socially distance with any volume of passengers in an airport.
“Social distancing does not work in any form of public transport, let alone aviation,” he added.
Instead, he suggested health checks on entering the terminal, with passengers who are displaying high temperatures receiving further checks to ensure they can fly and said surgical face masks ‘may become the norm’.
He added contact between passengers and airport staff would need to be lessened and ‘fantastic levels of hygiene’ maintained.
