Major U.S. airlines are in constant communication with their customers, sending them everything from marketing emails offering rewards credit cards to flight status updates. But airlines have not applied the same verve to communicating with passengers about exposure to the coronavirus. None of the four major U.S. airlines has a process for informing passengers if they have been on a flight with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
American, Delta, Southwest, and United all have the same position on telling passengers if they shared a flight with someone who tested positive: It’s up to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local health departments.
Since airlines implemented strict safety and cleaning protocols in the early weeks of the pandemic, there have been few reports of outbreaks linked to specific airline flights. But cases of potential exposure are fairly frequent: The CDC identified more than 4,000 flights between January and November 2020 that included potential exposures.
The CDC contends that it’s difficult to know for certain if someone was infected with the coronavirus on a flight. “CDC is not able to definitively determine that potential cases were associated (or not) with exposure in the air cabin or through air travel given the numerous opportunities for potential exposure associated with the entire travel journey and widespread global distribution of the virus,” CDC spokesperson Caitlin Shockey wrote in an email to the Washington Post, according to a September 2020 report in that paper.
The CDC is indeed in charge of the process of contact tracing and reaching out to passengers about a possible exposure. Yet the agency has been overwhelmed since the start of the pandemic, and so have local health departments that might be able to take up the cause.
Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, told USA Today recently that owing to underfunding of public health, and to state and local health departments being swamped with other COVID-related responsibilities, he isn’t confident in the agency’s ability to inform airline passengers of a potential exposure.
CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald told Fortune in an email that the agency hasn’t been able to conduct a contact investigation for all of the more than 4,000 flights with potential exposures between January and November 2020. Among the reasons McDonald cited were the need to prioritize investigations where the “CDC received contact information within a time frame to enable effective public health response.” He did not respond to a follow-up email asking for clarification on how many investigations were conducted and the exact number of flights with potential exposures.
Airlines currently play a support role in the contact tracing process by providing a flight manifest to the CDC if an exposure is suspected. And in December, United and Delta launched programs in concert with the CDC that collect passenger contact information that the government agency will have immediate access to. Passengers are prompted at check-in to voluntarily opt in to share their information.
But the major U.S. airlines themselves have chosen not to take on the responsibility of notifying passengers about potential exposure.
Fortune contacted the four largest U.S. airlines by passengers carried—American, Delta, Southwest, and United—as well as Airlines for America, the trade group that represents them and other major U.S. airlines, to ask about their process for exposure notification. Their responses were nearly the same: They said they work with the CDC to supply passenger information through flight manifests and that the CDC is responsible for contact tracing. None answered the question of why they had not set up their own notification systems in addition to CDC efforts.
According to McDonald of the CDC, “Nothing in CDC’s reporting requirements prevents airline operators from contacting passengers who may have been exposed to an infectious disease.”
Most airlines stated in their responses that the CDC is the best-positioned entity to conduct contact tracing and notification.
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, believes airlines should play a role in notification alongside the CDC and public health departments.
“They actually have the passenger information. They have addresses of people. This would not be that hard for airlines to do,” Jha said in a phone interview. “But my sense is they have not seen it as their responsibility, and that’s why it’s not happening.”
Not only are airlines the most technically capable of notification, but they also have an ethical duty to their customers, Jha said. He recalled that last summer, after dining on a restaurant’s outdoor patio, he received a call the next morning from the restaurant informing him that someone who had also dined there that night tested positive for COVID. The same standard should apply to airlines, he said.
“It’s their customers, so they should be the ones notifying.”
