Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on June 15 relaxed COVID-19 restrictions on passengers transfering to connecting flights.
In a Taipei Times article titled “Best move to re-establish passenger transits first” (June 7, page 8), I said that before Taiwan reopens its borders, the government should allow the nation’s international airports to resume transit passenger operations so that their operators and airlines have enough time to review staffing and equipment needs.
This would enable Taiwan’s airports to avoid following in the footsteps of airports overseas, which have been inundated with long flight delays due to staff and equipment shortages.
One example that attracted significant attention internationally was the serious “baggage pileups” following a “technical issue” with the luggage system at London Heathrow Airport.
Although Taoyuan airport sensibly opted for a “soft restart” of transit passenger operations, it has experienced glitches with luggage not being transferred to connecting flights on time.
This was caused by new rules implemented by the Civil Aviation Administration, which require that the passenger cabin and cargo holds of inbound aircraft are fully sanitized after passengers and crew disembark.
The regulations also stipulate that after sanitation, the cabin doors must be shut and disinfectant allowed to sit for 10 minutes, after which the air-conditioning should be restarted and run for five minutes.
Only after this process — after the aircraft has been positioned at the gate for about 30 minutes — can luggage be unloaded. If there is a large number of passengers on a flight, or there are disabled passengers, the unloading of luggage could be delayed another 10 to 15 minutes.
This is why inbound passengers now experience long wait times at baggage claim.
As for transferring passengers, once their checked-in luggage is unloaded from an inbound plane, it is sent to a basement area where it passes through a security check before being loaded onto a luggage rack for the connecting flight, and later sent to an outbound aircraft. This process on average takes 30 minutes.
However, under the new regulations, the transfer of luggage from one flight to the next takes at least 50 to 70 minutes.
This can result in outbound flights being delayed, or luggage of connecting passengers being left behind, which causes a whole new set of problems for the airport, and could result in customer dissatisfaction and complaints.
Airport officials should treat this problem seriously.
Moreover, the disinfection regimen of passenger cabins and cargo holds does not conform with COVID-19 prevention, nor the operational principles of aircraft air-conditioning, which is usually turned off in the cargo holds of passenger aircraft. The only exception regards animals being transported in the tail bulkhead of the aircraft, thus requiring a comfortable temperature.
If a flight’s cargo holds are contaminated by SARS-CoV-2 — but not the passenger cabin — virus-laden air would be blown into the cabin during the stipulated 5 minutes of air circulation and filtration following sanitization.
Although high-efficiency particulate air filtration systems that are installed in passenger aircraft are able to filter out 99 percent of viruses and are considered safe, mixing air of the cabin and cargo holds does not tally with the logic of COVID-19 prevention.
Outside of Taiwan, international airports carry out separated sanitizations of passenger cabins and cargo holds.
Taoyuan airport management should consult with the government and modify its disinfection regimen. Not only would this improve safety, but separated disinfection would also reduce delays to luggage unloading and ensure smooth transfers.
Anderson Fu is a senior traffic manager at an airline.
Translated by Edward Jones
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