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John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow Boss, Says Social Distancing Would Mean Half-Mile Lines to Board Big Airplanes

Boss of London’s biggest airport says future of air travel requires extreme levels of hygiene at airports, not just social distancing.

Good news for the manufacturers of retractable belt barrier systems: Social distancing at major airports would result in a half-mile line to board a jumbo jet, Heathrow’s chief executive has said. John Holland-Kaye warned the U.K.’s major airports do not have enough space for social distancing to be a solution for safe travel after the coronavirus lockdown ends. “Forget social distancing. It won’t work in aviation or any other form of public transport, and the problem is not the plane, it is the lack of space in the airport,’ he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “Just one jumbo jet would require a queue a kilometer long.” He said instead that post-pandemic travel should include mandatory health checks for passengers and “fantastic levels of hygiene” in airports to keep the risk of infection during journeys “very low.”