随着新冠疫情进入第三个年头，航空业也终于等来了复苏的迹象。在2020年4月，全球航空业的客运需求曾经一度爆跌近95%。不过到了2021年，客运航空大概已经恢复到了新冠疫情前40%的水平。

       国际机场协会北美分会（Airports Council International—North America）的安全事务高级副总裁克里斯托弗·比德韦尔说：“各大机场都做了很多工作，并且在防疫上做出大量投资，以确保旅客和工作人员的健康与安全。”

       各大机场采取的防疫措施在一定程度上提振了消费者的信心，也提高了人们坐飞机的意愿，但它的效果能够维持多久，还要打一个大大的问号。新一波奥密克戎毒株的流行再次表明，新冠病毒仍然在持续进化。另外，很多专家担心它很有可能会突破新冠疫苗构建的免疫屏障。在中短期看来，奥密克戎毒株是航空业面临的最大威胁。但从长期来看，下一波疫情大流行的可能仍然不能排除。

       全球机场行业是一个市值高达1300亿美元的庞大市场，光是美国机场行业的市值就达到了66亿美元。而自从新冠疫情爆发以来，飞机和机场就一直是防疫工作的重点之一。早在2018年，就有一位新加坡学者指出，如果某地爆发了一场疫情，至于它能否被控制在本地，还是会蔓延成一场灾难性的全球性疫情，“机场管理部门就是最后一道防线”。虽然自新冠疫情爆发以来，各大机场都做出了一些变化以重振公众的信心，但有专家在研究了机场在疫情传播中扮演的角色后表示，这些措施仍然远远不够。

       现在的机场，既不像新冠疫情刚爆发时那样宛如“鬼城”般的空无一人，也不像新冠疫情爆发前那样喧嚣。苏黎世大学旅行医学中心（University of Zurich’s Centre for Travel Medicine）的教授、世界卫生组织旅行者健康合作中心（WHO Collaborating Centre for Travellers’ Health）的主任帕特丽夏·施拉根霍夫指出，机场已经很好地适应了“新常态”下的一些基本的公共卫生限制。在很多地方的机场，像戴口罩、保持社交距离、用有机玻璃“硬隔离”和放置洗手液等做法都已经成了“新常态”，跟在超市等场所并没有什么区别。

       比德韦尔表示，在新冠疫情爆发后，他的公司立即成立了一个抗疫工作小组，负责指导北美地区机场的防疫工作。这个小组的成员由美国和加拿大的业内人士组成，小组里既没有科学家，也没有紧密追踪新冠疫情发展的专业人员，但是小组成员仍然带来了一些他们在工作中遇到的问题，同时该小组也在密切关注美国疾病预防与控制中心（CDC）等公共卫生机构的最新指南。

       他的公司还向《财富》杂志推荐了一份该公司在2020年6月发布的报告，这份报告距今已经一年多了。该报告是在美国的新冠疫情蔓延的第一阶段撰写的，它就美国如何从新冠疫情中复苏也提出了42条高级别的建议。该报告提出的一些公共卫生领域的干预政策已经得到了落实——比如用有机玻璃“硬隔离”、为经济复苏做好准备、保持社交距离、加强消毒等等。

       例如，现在北美机场的地面上到处都贴着贴纸，提示人们在排队时保持距离，这就是该公司的报告给出的建议之一。另外，各大机场还设计了专门的标语牌，提醒乘客戴口罩的重要性。

       不过，不论是在机场还是在其他场所，消费者是否守规矩都是一个大问题。今年早些时候，美国联邦航空管理局（Federal Aviation Authority）就指出，2021年上半年，该局接到了成千上万的乘客违规行为的投诉，其中有四分之三是关于乘客不愿意佩戴口罩的。而自2020年年初以来，美国就已经要求所有人在公共交通场所必须佩戴口罩。

       据《福布斯》（Forbes）在今年10月的报道，美国联邦航空管理局已经加大了对这些不守规矩的乘客的处罚力度。迄今为止，光是开出的罚单就超过了100万美元。但与此同时，负责机场安全的美国交通安全管理局（Transportation Security Administration）则只开出了2350美元的罚单。无独有偶，《财富》杂志的员工在撰写此文过程中也发现，美国和其他一些国家的多个机场并未强制顾客戴口罩。

       比德韦尔表示：“考虑到机场的占地面积很大，他们也没有足够的资源将人手安排在各个地点。”

       施拉根霍夫建议道，机场可以应用“影像流行病学”来提高防疫水平。顾名思义，就是使用人工智能技术对机场进行筛查，看哪些人没有正确佩戴口罩。一旦这些人被人工智能锁定，它就能够向机场工作人员发送实时报告，提醒哪些人没有正确佩戴口罩。施拉根霍夫认为，哪怕人们只是知道有这样一套系统存在，他们配合防疫的意愿都会大大提高。

       像戴口罩、保持社交距离、放置洗手液、有机玻璃“硬隔离”这些招术，在超市这种地方或许够用，因为这些地方暴露的风险较为有限，但对于机场就不同了。

       塞浦路斯大学（University of Cyprus）的教授克里斯托·尼克莱德斯专门研究传染病的传播方式，他说：“机场是疫情大流行的一个重要组成部分。”首先，机场是一个巨大的空间；其次，来自全国各地的人都会聚集在这里，有的吃吃喝喝，有的还要购物，而这正是传染病传播的温床。

       美国现在已经有了奥密克戎毒株的确诊病例，它可以追溯到从南非入境的一名旅客身上，而这名旅客正是从旧金山国际机场（San Francisco International Airport）入境的。虽然有关部门都认为，该乘客绝非美国境内唯一的一例奥密克戎病例，但这个案例也说明了机场在疫情传播过程中起了多么重要的作用。

       至于这名乘客（或者是将奥密克戎带到美国的其他什么人）入境时在机场干了什么，我们并不知道。他们有可能吃了一顿饭，在机场的酒吧里喝了一瓶啤酒，也有可能买了点东西——这些活动都是受到机场鼓励的。又或许他们只是取了行李，之后就打车离开了。

       现在我们也不知道奥密克戎毒株的传播性到底有多强，不过可以肯定的是，奥密克戎的传播性已经超过了迄今为止发现的所有毒株。世界各地的案例都表明，它很有可能将成为美国甚至全世界占主导地位的毒株。有的人可能只是摘下口罩吃了一个三明治，或者在排队时没有戴好口罩，就很有可能感染其他乘客，导致该毒株在全国范围内迅速传播。

       航空业的复苏，不止关系着行业的生死。现在新冠疫情已经进入第三个年头了，全世界的人都迫切期盼着与家人和朋友的团聚。

       施拉根霍夫表示，他在瑞士的诊所里的很多人都是“探亲访友者”，也就是坐飞机去拜访亲戚和朋友的人，不过比起新冠疫情以前还是少了很多。

       伦敦的上市数据分析咨询公司GlobalData认为，这些“探亲访友”者对整个行业的复苏至关重要。从历史数据看，探亲访友是人们乘飞机旅行的第二大原因。该公司认为，虽然2020年，人们的探亲访友需求下降了超过三分之二，乘坐国际航班探亲访友的人数也由大约2.3亿人次下降至仅6920万人次，但它的增长幅度预计将很快超过休闲旅游。

       施拉根霍夫称：“这方面的需求是十分强劲的。另外我也认为，‘旅行的自由’也是一项人权。”

       据悉，旧金山国际机场和美国的其他三家大型国际机场近来已经加强了对奥密克戎毒株的入境检测，但这很可能并不足以阻止奥密克戎的传播，因为该毒株很有可能已经在美国隐匿传播一段时间了。爱丁堡大学（University of Edinburgh）的基础设施研究专家、博士后研究员莫希特·阿罗拉表示，从几十年前开始，就有研究流行病学的专家不断指出，机场行业并未为流行病爆发做好准备。

       阿罗拉称，迄今为止，机场做出的改变大多数都是很简单的——比如安装洗手液盒等等，这些措施主要还是着眼机场的经济利益。例如在自助身份认证上，只要将扫描摄像头旋转360度即可完成。美国交通安全管理局已经在一些地区试点了自助认证等服务，从而减少了旅客与机场方面的接触，而这也是航空业冀希望发展的一个方向。

       “在某此程度上，这些措施是有帮助的。”阿罗拉说。同时他也表示，目前要做的事情还有很多，而且我们面临的也并非是一个新问题。在2009年的H1N1流感大流行期间，甚至在2002年至2003年的“非典”（SARS）期间，“人们就对防疫政策进行过重大讨论。”

       直到新冠疫情期间，这些政策讨论仍然在继续，不过它着眼的并非只是当前的疫情。接受本刊采访的专家们表示，当前政策讨论的重点是要为未来做好准备，特别是随着时代的发展，未来公众对传染病的暴露风险或许比以往还要高得多。

       有些专家提出的政策则更为激进，比新冠疫情以来机场采取的措施力度更大，但或许的确能够降低病毒的传播速度。比如塞浦路斯大学的教授尼克莱德斯就主张根据乘客的来源地和目的地进行进一步的隔离。

       她说：“这样你就可以了解发生了什么。”当然，这种做法会显著减少乘客的购物行为，而零售收入则占到了全球机场总收入的40%左右。

       另外，阿罗拉还指出了一个空间的问题。很多时候，乘客为了保持社交距离，会导致排队排得特别的长，从而升高了机场的暴露风险，抵消了保持社交距离所带来的一些好处。针对这种情况，机场不妨采取错峰登机或者分散排队的方式，来降低乘客的暴露风险。

       施拉根霍夫表示，目前，机场需要做出的最大的改变就是标准化。“人们需要非常明确的信息。”她说。

       比德韦尔坦承，到目前为止，包括标志标识在内的很多机场防疫措施尚未达到标准化。“不同的机场有不同的标志。”他说。也就是说，乘客到了一个陌生的环境，还会遇到一些陌生的规定，甚至就连标志都跟其他机场不一样，而这必然会降低防疫的效率和安全性。

       施拉根霍夫指出，标准化需要包括标志标识，但也远远不止标志标识这么简单。消费者从购买机票的那一秒起，他就必然会和整个全球航空网络的方方面面发生接触，哪怕只是从纽约州的罗切斯特飞到纽约市。因此，机场的防疫指南必须考虑到全球暴露的问题。“风险不光是从机场开始，而是在整个旅行当中。所以乘客都存在与旅行相关的暴露风险。”

       这也意味着机场必须得在思想上做出重大转变。阿罗拉表示，现在的机场普遍没有完成思想上的转变，现在大家基本上还是延袭新冠疫情前的那一套，只是在防疫上出台了一些新措施。“而这并不是商业模式上的真正转变。”

       今年早些时候，美国各大机场通过拜登的《基建法案》成功拿到了200亿美元的联邦拨款。比德韦尔指出，其中一些钱已经被个别机场花在了防疫措施上，不过他的公司并不知道相应开销的具体数额。

       公平地说，为了适应疫情以来的“新常态”，各大机场确实花了不少力气，也投入了不少真金白银。在撰写本文的过程中，《财富》杂志先后采访了美国的十个最大的机场，从它们向《财富》杂志提供的博文、媒体通稿和宣传信息看，它们在过去两年间确实做出了不小的改变。

       有些机场改进了空调和通风系统，使其通风效率提高了60%至100%——比如菲尼克斯天港国际机场（Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport）。该机场的发言人希瑟·谢尔布拉克在电子邮件中对《财富》杂志表示：“我们通过楼宇自动化系统，加强了对400个空气处理器中的34000多个滤芯的监测和评估。”另外，该机场获得的联邦拨款已经被用于“偿还债务、减免优惠和运营支出”。

       迈阿密国际机场（Miami International Airport）指出，2020年和2021年，它连续两年获得了国际机场协会颁发的“机场健康认证”。该机场的运营副总监丹·阿戈斯蒂诺和特别项目运营主管杰西卡·马林也在今年秋季的申请书中指出了机场面临的一些困难。

       “……根据美国疾病预防与控制中心的建议，在可能的情况下，机场要尽量鼓励乘客保持距离。但是由于客流量的增加，它只在有限的时间和地点可行。”

       机场的主观能动性毕竟是有限的。阿罗拉表示，受市场力量影响，他主张的很多防疫措施是不太可能被航空业主动采用的。“当你走进机场时，多数时候你就像一件传送带上的商品，只能任机场摆布。然而事实证明，在新冠疫情这样的环境里，这种心态是十分危险的。”

       施拉根霍夫认为，要想让机场行业加大防疫力度，采取正确的防疫措施，其责任不仅仅在于机场本身或者机场行业协会。“它应该是国家乃至国际层面的公共卫生政策的一部分。”她说。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

以下为原文：

As the pandemic slouches toward its third year, flying is making a comeback of sorts. From the crater of April 2020, when the global industry saw overall demand decline by nearly 95%, passenger air travel has built back up to an estimated 40% of pre-pandemic levels in 2021.

“Airports have done a lot and invested significantly in measures to provide for the health and safety of air travelers and workers,” says Christopher Bidwell, senior VP of security for Airports Council International—North America (ACI-NA).

The actions taken by airports have helped to enhance consumer confidence and raised people’s willingness to fly once more. But some of those gains may prove short-lived. The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has provided yet more evidence that this disease will keep evolving and may, many scientists fear, escape the guards available to vaccinated individuals. Beyond this short- and medium-term issue looms the prospect of the next pandemic.

Airplanes have been a central focus of public scrutiny, but airports themselves—which in 2021 represented a $130 billion global market segment and a $6.6 billion U.S. segment—are an integral part of the picture when it comes to pandemic safety. Airport authorities “remain as the last line of defense between controllable local outbreak and catastrophic global pandemic,” wrote one Singaporean academic in 2018. While airports have made a number of changes in an attempt to restore public confidence since the COVID-19 pandemic began, experts who study the role these institutions play in the spread of infectious disease say far more is needed.

A visit to an airport today looks different from either the zombie-movie emptiness of the first phase of the pandemic or the bustle of pre-pandemic days. Airports have done a reasonable job adapting to the basic public health restrictions of the new normal, says Patricia Schlagenhauf, a professor at the University of Zurich’s Centre for Travel Medicine and codirector of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Travellers’ Health. In many places, norms like wearing masks and social distancing rules, plexiglass barriers, and hand sanitizer stands have all become par for the course in airports just like they have in grocery stores.

After the pandemic started, Bidwell says his organization quickly convened a panel to issue advice to North American airports. That panel, composed of industry members from the U.S. and Canada, doesn’t have a scientist on staff or someone whose dedicated job it is to keep abreast of developments. Instead, says Bidwell, the members of the panel bring studies they’ve encountered in their work. The panel also watches for new guidelines from public health agencies such as the CDC, he says.

His organization referred Fortune to a report it produced in June 2020, more than a year ago. That document, written in the first phase of what has proved to be a much longer public health emergency than originally anticipated, contains 42 high-level recommendations for recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The public health interventions it calls for—plexiglass, preparations for recovery from the bottom of the slump, physical distancing, enhanced cleaning—are already underway.

In one of the first moves, says Bidwell, airports across North America began spotting their floor with now-ubiquitous stickers that illustrate how far apart people ought to stand. They also devised signage to remind passengers of the importance of wearing masks.

In airports, as in those other settings, compliance remains an issue. Earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Authority reported that three-quarters of the thousands of reports of unruly passenger behavior it received in the first half of 2021 were the result of airline passengers refusing to comply with the federal mask mandate, which has been in force in transportation networks across the U.S. since early 2020.

The FAA has been active in fining unruly passengers, Forbes reported in October, issuing more than $1 million in fines. But the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees airport security, has issued a total of only $2,350 in fines. Anecdotally, Fortune staff who worked on this story have also observed mask-wearing not being enforced at a number of airports both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“Given the significant real estate at airports, they don’t have the resources to put people at every location,” says Bidwell.

Schlagenhauf has one suggestion for improving the status quo: photo-epidemiology. This process involves using artificial intelligence to scan the airport, looking for people who aren’t properly wearing a mask. Once those people have been identified by the A.I., it can send real airport employees to remind the non-mask wearers. Even the knowledge that such a system is in place would likely increase compliance, she says.

*****

Mask-wearing, distancing, hand sanitizer, plexiglass: These kinds of interventions are sufficient in places like grocery stores, where exposure to disease is limited. But airports are different.

“Airports are very important building blocks of a pandemic,” says Christos Nicolaides, a professor at the University of Cyprus who studies how contagions spread. Big spaces where crowds of people coming and going from different parts of the country or world mix, eat, and shop: It’s a recipe for spreading contagious diseases quickly, he says.

The Omicron variant’s entry into the U.S. was linked to a single passenger who returned from South Africa, the first country to detect the variant, through San Francisco International Airport. Authorities believe the passenger wasn’t the only case in the U.S., but this case highlights the important role airports play as centers for disease transmission.

We don’t know what that passenger, or the others who introduced the Omicron variant to the U.S., did at the airport when they arrived in the country. Perhaps they had a meal between flights, drank a beer at the airport bar, or did some shopping—all activities that airports encourage a captive audience of passengers to take part in. Maybe they stopped just long enough to pick up their luggage from the carousel and catch a cab.

We also don’t know yet exactly how contagious Omicron is, though it’s safe to say it is far more transmissible than any other variant yet found. It’s on the rise in the United States, and examples around the world suggest it may become dominant here and globally. Individuals taking some maskless moments to eat a sandwich or not wearing a face covering properly in the reentry line could have infected other passengers and sent the variant spiraling across the country.

Getting airports right matters for far more than just the air industry’s bottom line. As the pandemic stretches into its third year, families and friends around the world are desperate to reunite.

At her clinic in Switzerland, Schlagenhauf says a significant fraction of the people she sees—a load still far reduced from before the pandemic—are “VFR travelers”—people flying in order to visit friends and relatives.

GlobalData, a publicly traded data and analytics consulting company based in London, estimates that VFR travel—historically the second most common reason to take a flight, after leisure travel—will be “vital” to the industry’s recovery. It expects to see VFR’s growth outpace that of leisure travel after declining by more than two-thirds in 2020, from approximately 230 million international departures to just 69.2 million.

“That’s a very strong need,” Schlagenhauf says, “and I think it’s also a human right, to be able to travel.”

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SFO and three other large international airports have now enhanced screening for Omicron, but it likely won’t be enough to contain the variant, which is already circulating within the country. Scientists who study pandemic prep have been warning for decades that airports aren’t prepared for pandemics, says Mohit Arora, a postdoctoral researcher who studies infrastructure at the University of Edinburgh.

The changes that airports have made so far have largely been the simple ones—installing hand sanitizer dispensers being one example—and those that most align with their economic goals, says Arora. Take passengers self-scanning their identification, something that Bidwell says was accomplished by simply rotating the existing scanners 360 degrees. Self-scanning and the self-serve TSA kiosks that are being piloted in several sites throughout the country have reduced contact between travelers and the airport, he says, but it was also a direction that the air travel industry was trying to move in anyway.

“To some extent, these measures are helpful,” Arora says. But, he says, there’s a lot more that needs to be done, and the problem isn’t a new one. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and even earlier, during the SARS outbreak of 2002–2003, “there have been significant debates about pandemic policy,” he says.

Those debates are ongoing during the COVID-19 pandemic as well. But they’re not just about the current emergency, the experts interviewed for this story say: They’re about long-term preparation for a world where the probability of pandemic illness exposure for the public is much higher than it has been in previous eras.

Some of the policies that those who study airports have called for would result in much bigger changes to airports than have happened so far during this pandemic, but could result in much lower disease spread. Nicolaides is an advocate for the idea of siloing passengers further, based on where they came from and where they’re going.

“That way you can keep track of what’s going on,” the University of Cyprus professor says. Of course, that measure would also seriously decrease passenger exposure to retail, which accounts for about 40% of revenue across airports globally.

In addition, there’s a fundamental space issue in airports, says Arora, and it’s leading to incredibly long lines as passengers try to find enough space to social distance while queuing. That issue undoes many of the gains of having less contact when someone does eventually make it to the front of the line, he says. Measures like timed entry and more divided queues could change the degree of exposure.

The biggest change that’s needed, says Schlagenhauf, is standardization. “People need really clear information,” she says.

Right now, Bidwell acknowledges, measures like signage aren’t standardized. “Different airports have different brandings,” he says. That means travelers are encountering an unfamiliar environment with new and specific rules, and even the signs may look quite different from other airports, something that has been shown to decrease efficiency and safety in other traffic control contexts.

Standardization needs to include signage but go far beyond it, Schlagenhauf says. The second a passenger buys a plane ticket, that person is inherently part of a network that touches nearly every point on the globe, even if they personally are going only from Rochester, N.Y., to New York City. She says the guidelines for safety should be coordinated with that global exposure in mind. “The risk doesn’t just start at the airport. It’s the whole journey,” she says. “All travelers are associated with travel-related infection exposure.”

That’s a major change in thinking. These kinds of endeavors have not been widely undertaken by airports, says Arora. Presently, he says, the status quo is to do what was done before the pandemic, but with some new precautions. “That’s not really a change in business model,” he says.

Earlier this year, U.S. airports received $20 billion in federal support as part of President Biden’s infrastructure deal. Some of that money has been spent on these pandemic safety measures by individual airports, says Bidwell, but his organization doesn’t know how much or how exactly it was spent.

In fairness, airports have put real work—and real money—into adapting. Many of the top 10 airports in the U.S. contacted for this story referred Fortune to their blogs, press releases, and customer-facing information, all of which demonstrated the degree of change they have made in the past two years.

Some modified their HVAC system, as in the case of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, to turn over 60% to 100% more air. In addition, “we have increased monitoring and condition assessment of more than 34,000 filters in more than 400 air handlers through our building automation system,” spokesperson Heather Shelbrack told Fortune in an email. The federal money that the airport received was spent on “debt service payments, concessions relief, and operation expenses,” she said in the email.

Miami International Airport highlighted the fact it worked to earn ACI World’s annual airport health accreditation in 2020 and 2021, succeeding both years. In the application from this fall, shared with Fortune, Dan Agostino, the airport’s assistant director of operations, and Jessica Marin, operations special projects administrator, identify some of the difficulties airports face.

“…Wherever possible the airport tries to encourage physical distancing, per CDC recommendation,” they note. “However, due to increase in traffic, it is only feasible in limited times and locations.”

But they can only do so much on their own. Arora says the market forces that drive air travel mean that the bigger disease prevention measures he advocates are unlikely to be adopted by industry on its own. “When you enter an airport, most of the time you’re processed like a commodity,” he says. “That mindset has proven to be very dangerous in an environment like a pandemic.”

Accountability for getting airports right stretches far beyond individual airport owners and the associations that represent them, says Schlagenhauf. “It’s all part of the public health response on a national level and an international level,” she says.