Qantas says vaccines will be required to fly

The boss of Australian airline Qantas says governments are going to insist on vaccines for international travellers.

Coronavirus vaccines are seen as crucial to reviving an industry that saw worldwide passenger numbers fall 75.6% last year.

Chief executive Alan Joyce told the BBC many governments are talking about vaccination as "a condition of entry".

Even if they weren't, he thought the airline should enforce its own policy.

He believes that would justify changing the terms and conditions on which tickets are booked.

Joyce thinks passengers would be willing to accept the change.

The lack of passengers means that in the last six months of 2020 Qantas lost 800m US dollars.

That compares with a profit of $596m in the same period of 2019.

It's also meant 8,500 job cuts from a pre-pandemic staff of about 29,000.

And thousands of others are on furlough, with the Australian government paying their wages.

Other international carriers have seen similar reversals in their fortunes.

Aviation is vital to the global economy.

The International Air Transport Association estimates that it supports 1.8 trillion US dollars in global economic activity.

But government restrictions and fears of catching coronavirus have led to an unprecedented fall in passenger numbers in an industry that carried 4.5 billion people in 2019.

[Source: BBC]