International air travel is starting to creep back, complete with a patchy network of destinations, virus tests and quarantines

This month, China and South Korea opened a tightly controlled travel corridor between Seoul and 10 Chinese regions, including Shanghai.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lifted travel restrictions between the three Baltic states on May 15, while Australia and New Zealand are also working to resume flights between the two countries

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Passenger and cargo aircraft parked at the Southern California Logistics Airport on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, in Victorville, California. Photo: AP

Published: 10:51am, 19 May 2020Updated: 10:56pm, 19 May 2020

Planes are flying again on a handful of international routes, creating a possible path to recovery for a battered industry. But with Covid-19 still spreading, aspiring passengers will have to navigate a patchy network that might include virus tests and weeks-long quarantine.

This month, China and South Korea opened a tightly controlled travel corridor between Seoul and 10 Chinese regions, including Shanghai. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lifted travel restrictions between the three Baltic states on May 15. Australia and New Zealand are also working to resume flights between the two countries.

The unique accords have emerged as templates for airlines that have been pushed to the brink by the industry’s worst-ever crisis and for countries desperate to salvage some tourism as the world enters a deep recession. But they also highlight the biggest challenge to re-establishing international travel: there’s little agreement on what kind of protections could limit the risk of spreading Covid-19 across borders.

Lifting quarantine requirements and reopening borders is fraught with risk. Returning passengers from hotspots like Iran, New York and Italy have already sparked fresh rounds of infection in countries that had seemingly flattened the curve, including China and Australia. The fact that people with no obvious symptoms can still be contagious only complicates matters, and given how easily the virus spreads and the difficulties of social distancing during travel, each reopened route could spark new waves of infections.

Airlines and airports worldwide are clamouring for a coordinated approach; A United Nations agency that sets the rules for the industry, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, plans to deliver global guidelines by the end of May. They “will have to be flexible, adaptable and potentially reversible,” said Philippe Bertoux, chairman of the Covid-19 Aviation Recovery Task Force at ICAO.

Until it reopened its border to Korea, China had banned almost all foreigners from entering since late March. Before Korean travellers can fly there, they have to jump through a lot of hoops. Conditions of entry include two weeks of screening and a virus test at home, a two-day quarantine in China, and then another blood test.