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A NARRATIVE OF “shaming” people who have flown during Covid-19 is turning the public away from travel, the head of Aer Lingus has suggested.
Interim Chief Executive Officer of Aer Lingus Donal Moriarty has said that the aviation industry has been impacted by negative connotations attached to taking flights during the pandemic.
Speaking on Brendan O’Connor on RTÉ Radio One, Moriarty said that there has been a “degree of toxicity and flight shaming and we really we have to move on from that”.
“If you look at how important international travel is to the Irish economy, I think we need to pivot away from that mentality to a position where we’re actually promoting international travel as critical to our economy,” Moriarty said.
“I think it’s the narrative that has caused people to feel unsafe – the narrative that has come out at a policy level,” he said.
Moriarty referenced guidance published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on air travel and Covid-19 to suggest that the risk from travel is not as high as some have believed it to be.
The ECDC guidance advised that a modelling study “estimates that imported Covid-19 cases, using the May 2019 travel volumes, would have accounted for less than 1% of the total of cases in 48 countries and less than 10% in 142 countries around the world in May 2020″.
Currently, people travelling into Ireland from overseas are required to fill out a Covid-19 Passenger Locator Form.
Moriarty suggested that arrivals should be required to download the Track and Trace app when they enter the country.
He said that a “far more effective regime” than the existing one would be to implement rapid antigen tests prior to arrival alongside compulsory use of the Track and Trace App for international travellers after they arrive.
“I don’t think Aer Lingus directly would provide [antigen tests] but we would identify providers of that service. I think Dublin Airport would shift directly to antigen testing as a standard if that were approved as a standard, so those providers are ready in the market and ready to provide that service.”
Moriarty said that two million requests for a refund or voucher were made to Aer Lingus due to halts in travel from the start of the pandemic.
Of those, around 90% have been processed, Moriarty said, with several thousands of customers still waiting to receive a refund or voucher.
Ireland is currently operating within the EU-wide traffic lights system for international travel which categories countries as green, orange or red depending on the country’s incidence rate of Covid-19.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said in November that the government was asking people not to travel home for Christmas, but that if felt they needed to, they should “follow the rules”.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said if people choose to travel home this Christmas they should follow the traffic light rules as regards testing.
Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan described the choice to travel as a “judgement call”.
“It is a judgement call and it is the individual that is best placed to judge that, I think everyone’s family circumstances are different, I don’t think we can define that,” Ryan said.
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Wow! Now even the bins are spying on us. All we need now is for public toilets to record all our “movements” and the colour of our underwear and big brother will know all it possibly could about us. Who needs privacy?!
Good one shirley, “movements” lol!!
They likely already do. Think about the movement activated flushes and the movement activated lights.
*may or may not be serious, I’ll let you decide.
Ha ha, nice one Shirley, what colour is your under pants indeed………?
Public toilets testing your ‘movements’ has been proposed to screen for health problems. I think it would be a great idea really, provided the information was confidentially passed to a smart phone or emailed to you.
What underpants? Commando is the only way to go in this weather!
Good one Shirley.
“Colour of your underwear”..hmm
What if….What if the bins refuse to stop collecting data?
And so it begins…..
I love London, it’s my 34th favorite place in the world to be.
You’re my 34th favourite poster on the Journal.ie
That’s the 27th time somebody has said that to me
It would never work here – no bins.
So why, with so much surveillance, can’t they find the idiots who damaged signals so the Dart is out of action this morning
My god why cant a bin just collect rubbish? What next, laptops that recycle your lunch waste!?
The difference between hits on a website and this scenario is people are aware of cookies on their computer and informed again each time they go into a new website. Ya wouldn’t really be expecting a bin to be spying on you. A whole new meaning to bin it your way.
and strictly speaking web-sites aren’t supposed to share this with one another .. which is the focus of the rather big “Do Not Track” privacy-debate that is currently ongoing on the web …
How are people going to know if its collecting their data already?
How is the average Joe going to know they are going to turn it on or off in any case?
The government possibly already has this technology in bloody street lamps and we don’t know about it!
government = your elected representatives who have a security mandate (for better or worse)
Renew = a private enterprise, who may or may not flip your identity over to any bidder if times get tough
So now they will throw the bins in the rubbish, like a Big Brother has been!
Spooooky I means
Well I know “THEY” are spying on me. “THEY” keep taking money out of my pay cheque whether I like it or not.
Almost darlik like…sooooooky!
Just for future reference, it’s dalek.
Minority report.
Maybe they want to collect the parts for recycling. It is a good idea because some parts of phone are radio active.
Read the article again there chap.
Yes. But the same level of surveillance exists here in Ireland
If you think we have the same level of surveillance as they have in the UK, especially London, you’re either seriously paranoid or you’ve never visited the neighbours.
Most, if not all phone masts, are fitted with surveillance equipment here
Have you even read the article ???
My post was for Francis
You couldn’t piss crooked without them knowing it.
Has bins..
It looks like a Dalek prototype.
WTF!?
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