BALPA picks holes in government Covid travel data
British Air Line Pilots’ Association is calling out the government’s reliance on compromised data to support its stance on international travel that it says is neither transparent nor complete.
The government has made public some data and analysis by the Joint Biosecurity Centre which informs its updates to the classification of green, amber and red lists for travel to and from the UK, but BALPA says it contains very limited data.
There are many blank fields, and only contain data for the 22 countries that have been moved to the green or red lists.
Most of the data is ‘suppressed’ it says.
Data covering the remaining countries is not published, so there is no public available data justifying the restrictions on more than 200 countries and territories.
BALPA wants to know why the government is suppressing low data scores, and wants to know when the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s data for the US and Mediterranean islands will be published.
"If decisions are to be trusted, all of the evidence that they are purported to be based on must be published and a detailed explanation provided," said BALPA Acting General Secretary, Brian Strutton.
"Not enabling safe travel to low-risk countries will mean more redundancies for pilots and others in the travel sector, on top of the thousands that have already taken place."
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