British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have signed on to a test run at London Heathrow for express lanes that will direct fully-vaccinated passengers through the UK border quickly, while the unvaccinated will have to wait in line for their documents to be inspected.
The idea is to alleviate lines that have stretched up to seven hours, with delays common even before the pandemic. With international traffic growing again, the airport and the airlines hope to convince the government that it will be safe and effective to have airlines pre-check the vaccine status of passengers at or before check-in so it won’t need to be done again on arrival.
Heathrow’s CEO told BBC that “At the moment the main barrier to people who have been doubly vaccinated … is being able to demonstrate to the government that we can check that they’ve had the vaccination already.” The test will initially cover only select flights from Athens, Los Angeles, Montego Bay and New York.
