International GA flying and covid testing requirement?

[RudyP]

Has anyone flown themselves in and out of the country lately? If so, were you required to show a negative COVID test upon US entry? I know the CDC supposedly requires this for any flying passenger and if flying the airlines, they are required to enforce but if flying oneself and you land on US soil as a citizen with no test proof - what would happen?

 

[mandm]

Following

 

[mcmanigle]

My understanding is that it is officially an operating requirement, but there is no-one to routinely check / enforce it for GA. I guess it could be checked if you were unlucky enough to be ramp checked on landing. But nobody I have heard of, including on my own return from the Bahamas in June 2021, was asked to show their tests by CBP or anywhere else along the "normal entry" pathway. My wife and I had our electronic test results in our phones just in case, but were never asked for them.

 

[hindsight2020]

Has anyone flown themselves in and out of the country lately? If so, were you required to show a negative COVID test upon US entry? I know the CDC supposedly requires this for any flying passenger and if flying the airlines, they are required to enforce but if flying oneself and you land on US soil as a citizen with no test proof - what would happen?

On the federal front? Not a damn thing once repatriated. That's why the DoS places the burden one the airlines, which can only enforce it during the boarding process abroad, aka not in US soil. Once on US soil, you are repatriated, and all the constitutional protections kick in. By the DoS own concession, the CDC order doesn't even apply to land or sea re-entries. So much for legal consistency. They know they're speeding, which is why they hide behind the airline hassling you on the foreign port, not on US soil.

At any rate, my re-entry anecdote is circa April 2021, x2. Nobody to intercept me about it, nobody asked as expected. Same outcome as the prior posters. This is largely a part 121 focus point. Nobody is watching private flyers, especially if arriving at an AOE where you don't share a common access point with part 121 arrivals in the first place.

The DoS doesn't have enough manpower to staff all AOEs where non-part 121 intl arrivals occur, and they largely don't care to. Again, they recognize the effort is moot if they catch you without a test on US soil, and even if they wanted to fine you, which they could, they still couldn't deport you. That's why they subrogate the manpower requirement onto the airlines, and direct the airlines to make the requirement a boarding requirement on the foreign port. As a private flyer, there's no mechanism to stop you from departing (no airline to stop you), so by the time you arrive on US soil you're no different than the guy who crossed through a land border. The fact we share the same modality of travel with that of the flying buses, is merely incidental to the requirement the DoS and CDC are after.

 

[mcmanigle]

Right, my understanding is that in the extremely unlikely event some kind of action were taken, it wouldn’t/couldn’t be against the traveler without a test. It would be against the operator of the aircraft who allowed that person aboard an inbound flight. (Those just might both happen to be you.)

 

[RudyP]

Awesome - thanks all - mostly what I figured (including the "what are they going to do, force a US citizen family to self-deport back out of the country?" aspect) but good to know it's unlikely we will be subject to any major hassle.

 

[mandm]

I wouldn’t even think deport was an option. Make you take a rapid test or hold you in quarantine maybe. Oh the US loves to fine you, anything for a buck and not providing a service. But Covid is pretty much a non event. Time to wake up and move on with life.

 

[Plano Pilot]

Aviation Groups Call for End to U.S. Covid Testing Requirements
by Gregory Polek
- February 3, 2022, 11:36 AM


Several aviation groups including the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airlines for America (A4A) on Thursday urged the U.S. government to remove pre-departure testing requirements for vaccinated travelers. According to IATA, the vaccinated traveler population adds no risk to the domestic U.S. population given increased immunity levels, the pervasiveness of Covid-19 in all 50 states, rising vaccination rates, and new therapeutic treatments.

“The experience of Omicron has made it clear that travel restrictions have little to no impact in terms of preventing its spread,” said IATA director general Willie Walsh. “Moreover, as Omicron is already broadly present across the U.S., fully vaccinated travelers bring no extra risk to the local population. International travelers should face no additional screening requirements than what is applied to domestic travel. In fact, at this stage of the pandemic, travel should be managed in the same way as access to shopping malls, restaurants, or offices.”

IATA cites statistics showing that more than 74.3 million people—or at least 22 percent of the U.S. population—have contracted Covid-19 and that the existence of asymptomatic infections and limited testing early in the pandemic means that authorities arrived at the figure based on an undercount. “When combined with an adult population that is 74 percent fully vaccinated, it is clear that the U.S. is developing very high levels of population immunity,” said IATA in a statement.

The organizations also noted that the EU has recommended that its member states remove Covid-19 travel restrictions for travel within the EU, and the UK has announced the removal of pre-departure testing for vaccinated air travelers to enter the country. According to IATA, the UK concluded that it could no longer justify the testing given the cost to both passengers and airlines and the lack of evidence that the regime protected the population from Covid-19.

IATA cited recent research by Oxera and Edge Health in Italy, Finland, and the UK that supports the conclusion that travel measures do little to control the spread of Covid-19 when it already broadly affected the local population. The studies found that, if implemented at an early stage, travel restrictions might at best delay the peak of a new wave by a few days and marginally reduce the number of cases. Furthermore, IATA’s most recent air traveler survey showed that 62 percent of respondents support removing a testing requirement for fully vaccinated people.


“Removing the pre-departure testing requirement for fully vaccinated travelers will greatly support the recovery of travel and aviation in the U.S. and globally without increasing the spread of Covid-19 and its variants in the U.S. population,” said Walsh. “There is no use in closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.”

Aviation Groups Call for End to U.S. Covid Testing Requirements | Air Transport News: Aviation International News (ainonline.com)

 

[Katamarino]

Testing before entering the US does seem a bit pointless given the half-arsed measures to control covid inside the country. A bit like washing your hands *before* using a filthy public bathroom. Why bother?