As demand for air travel is expected to recover over the summer, the global airline industry, which has been hit hard by the epidemic, is facing a new challenge as many passengers are boarding with fake Covid-19 (Chinese communist virus) health certificates, adding an extra layer of inspection and longer wait times for airlines and fines for inadvertence.
The Wall Street Journal reports that many countries require incoming passengers to present Covid-19 health certificates, but the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says that fake certificates have been found in France, Brazil, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, among other countries. Border control authorities and police have also reported arrests of people selling fake certificates in the United Kingdom, Spain, Indonesia and Zimbabwe, among other places.
The problem is mainly with international flights, as Covid-19 health certificates are now not usually required for domestic flights. Airlines that rely more heavily on cross-border travel, especially European carriers, are increasingly panicked as they look ahead to a summer business recovery.
The proliferation of fake Covid-19 health certificates has exposed a logistical blind spot as airlines rush to sort out post-epidemic travel standards, streamline procedures and spur demand. Airlines say employees are ill-equipped to handle and oversee all these health certifications, and fear the problem is exacerbated when some countries start requiring vaccination certificates.
At Brussels Airlines, employees pass fake certificates they encounter to each other to keep abreast of the technical methods used by fraudsters.
The airline is pushing for a digital health pass that can store vaccine certificates and Covid-19 test results. Industry insiders say this will make it easier to test the authenticity of documents and avoid physical checks at airports. But even so, it still won’t completely stop people from using fake certificates.
About 120 countries test arrivals, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which requires overseas flights to verify passengers’ health documents, making sure to show a negative test result or one that has recovered from infection.
Many governments have shifted the burden of checking health certificates to airlines, just as customs must check passports.
Deutsche Lufthansa AG was fined 25,000 euros (about $29,800) for allowing passengers with false health certificates on board, according to people familiar with the matter. According to German police, a total of 3,838 “illegal entries” were registered in Germany from Jan. 24 to April 8.
Qatar Airways requires that certificates be sent directly from the testing clinic. The company’s president, Al Baker, said anyone carrying a forged certificate would be blacklisted.
At London Heathrow Airport, additional checks by border control led to a wait of more than six hours for arriving passengers, even as only 541,000 passengers passed through the airport in March, down 91.7 percent from the same period in 2019.
The airline is refusing to take responsibility for validating certificates at check-in or elsewhere in the airport. Shai Weiss, president of Virgin Atlantic Airways, said, “We can’t have the flight crew or airport personnel verify the authenticity of all these documents. It’s too time consuming and airport queues have increased two to three times.”
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