El Al will kick off a pilot program on Thursday to screen passengers for COVID-19 just before boarding their airplane or on the flight itself so that they do not have to be tested upon landing at Ben-Gurion Airport.
According to Health Ministry regulations, any traveler entering Israel must be screened for the virus. Even vaccinated individuals who are not coming from banned or orange countries with special quarantine requirements must take this test and enter isolation until receipt of a negative result or 24 hours – whichever comes first.
Travelers have complained of long lines and crowded closed spaces, a recipe for spreading infection.
The pilot, which is being carried out in collaboration with the Health Ministry and the coronavirus testing company Femi Premium which already manages testing at the airport, would enable passengers to skip these lines.
Specifically, the pilot will be carried out on an El Al flight leaving New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport at 2 p.m. Thursday with around 280 passengers. XpresCheck, which already operates at JFK, will perform the tests at the gate for anyone who wants to test in advance.
This is the first time in the world, according to El Al, that passengers will be tested before they land in their destination country. The screening does not replace the coronavirus test that must be performed 72 hours before boarding one’s flight.
“If the pilot is successful,” a representative of the airline told The Jerusalem Post, “it will be extended to additional flights and facilitate easier movement of incoming passengers through the airport.”
Passengers who take advantage of the program will be asked to provide their details for identification in their country of destination, including name, passport number, address and telephone number.
Qualified testing personnel will carry out the tests wearing appropriate personal protective gear and disposable gloves, which will be replaced between passengers. Travelers will be swabbed in their throat and nose. The specimens will be stored in dedicated sampling tubes that contain the traditional special solution for transmitting and maintaining viruses. Each tube will be marked with a dedicated barcode for easy identification. The tubes will be transferred in a refrigerated cooler that will guarantee the quality of the samples during the flight.
Results will be delivered to the passengers in Israel, according to the standards of the Health Ministry.
The cost of the test should be around NIS 80, El Al said, similar to the current cost for testing at the airport. El Al will not charge anything additional to provide the service. However, the airline told the Post that there are no plans to make PCR testing part of the ticket price.
“Payment is being made to the professional medical body that performs the test,” the representative said.
The airline said that the goal is to restore the flying experience to something more similar to what it was before COVID-19.
“Despite the complex situation and restrictions,” El Al’s CEO Avigal Soreq said, “El Al will continue to do everything in its power to develop creative and effective solutions for its customers, ones that will allow Israel to open up to foreign tourism, which is so critical to the state’s economy and employment of tens of thousands of Israeli families.
“We call on decision-makers to examine these methods, and to adopt similar solutions, so that we can live alongside the coronavirus,” he said.