The government of Canada has imposed additional travel restrictions for all inbound air passengers in a further effort to stop the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus. The country’s minister of intergovernmental affairs Dominic Leblanc says on 30 December that Canada will soon require all arriving passengers to present a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result that is less than 72h old. This is in addition to the mandatory 14-day quarantine for inbound travellers which the country has maintained for much of this year. “Canada will quickly implement the requirement for all arriving passengers to have a negative PCR covid test three days before arriving in Canada,” Leblanc says. The requirement will go into effect “in the next few days”, he adds. The country’s minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, Bill Blair, says that while the constitution guarantees Canadians the right to move about freely, the government continues to “strongly advise against all discretionary travel”. “This is not an alternative to quarantine,” says Blair. “It’s an additional layer of protection.” It will be up to the airlines to ensure that each passenger has a negative test result prior to boarding and travellers to Canada who are found disregarding the quarantine requirement can be subject to up to 6 months in jail or a fine of C$750,000 ($587,000), Blair adds. The new order could lead to a situation where a passenger arriving in Canada with proof that they are coronavirus-free will still be forced into 14 days of isolation despite that negative test. Montreal-based legacy carrier Air Canada, whose outgoing chief executive Calin Rovinescu has been a loud critic of the government’s strict travel restrictions, did not comment on the planned policy. Calgary-headquartered competitor WestJet says it is awaiting ”further clarity” from the government. As in other countries, Canada’s air transport industry has suffered as the pandemic continues to tear across the continent. Air Canada has protested what it sees as draconian and unnecessary measures that are hindering its return to normal business operations. Rovinescu repeatedly blasted the government for its lack of financial support for the sector, while at the same time it maintains the strict travel restrictions that have led to widespread job losses and continue to prevent the sector from any significant rebound. Last week Canadian regulators prohibited the operation of commercial passenger flights from the UK to Canada after the UK announced it had identified a new, faster-spreading strain of the Covid-19 virus. Since then, the virus has also been identified in Canada.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has placed new tariffs on aircraft manufacturing parts as well as some alcohol products from the European Union in an ongoing transatlantic spat about aerospace subsidies. The USTR accuses Europe of unfair calculation when it imposed a round of tariffs that resulted from World Trade Organisation (WTO) litigation earlier this year. In October, EU authorities secured the right to impose almost $4 billion in tariffs on US imports, including aircraft, in retaliation for harm arising from US government subsidies to Chicago-based airframer Boeing. That’s just over half of the $7.5 billion awarded to the US side following a similar subsidies case a year earlier. The USTR says the time period that Europe used to calculate its levies varied from that used to calculate its own earlier tariffs on European products, hence the adjustment. “In implementing its tariffs… the EU used trade data from a period in which trade volumes had been drastically reduced due to the horrific effects on the global economy from the Covid-19 crisis,” USTR writes. The result was that Europe placed tariffs on far more products than if it had “utilised a normal period” to calculate them, it adds. “However, in order to not escalate the situation, the United States is adjusting the product coverage by less than the full amount that would be justified utilising the EU’s chosen time period,” USTR says. Aircraft parts, non-sparkling wines, cognacs and brandies from France and Germany will be the target of the new levies. It is not clear when these are to begin. It is the latest move in a long-running trade dispute between US and European regulators on subsidies for large civil aircraft that has been broiling since 1994. Boeing started the transatlantic duel with Airbus over subsidies, but following the WTO’s rulings of one another’s cases the conflict has descended from legal sniping into a tiresome war of attrition. Each side has imposed tariffs on a range of products – of which aircraft are the most high-profile – while underlining reciprocal claims of unfair government support. In February, the USTR raised its tariffs on large European aircraft to 15%, up from the 10% levy it had implemented in October 2019, when it had been given the right to impose up to 100% tariffs on $7.5 billion of goods, including Airbus jets of more than 30t. At that time, the US also introduced 25% levies on other specialty products such as Irish and Scotch whiskey, German machinery, and cheese. Earlier this month, the UK’s Department for International Trade said that it had opted for an “independent approach” to the aerospace conflict, as well as other trade issues with the USA, and unilaterally suspended the tariffs on US aircraft imports. The UK’s departure from the EU this year – and the impending end of the transition period on 1 January 2021 – means it will be able to act separately from the EU in the future.

Mexican low-cost carrier Interjet has extended its grounding until at least 11 January, after cancelling all flight operations during the Christmas period. Although other local carriers such as Aeromexico, Volaris and Aeromar have recovered many of their suspended frequencies to serve the increased holiday demand for travel, Interjet says it "is not operating some of its routes due to the situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic". Currently, no flight can be booked with a travel date on or before 10 January. Some domestic routes show availability from 11 January. Previously, ticket agents had indicated that flights would resume on 1 January. According to an airline source, almost 60 Airbus A320-family jets have been repossessed by their owners, while "those few still stored at Interjet's Toluca facilities" are not in airworthy condition. These leaves the airline with a small fleet of Superjet 100s, of which only five remain in operation, says the source. Mexico's federal customer-protection court Profeco has established a special procedure to collect claims from passengers with valid tickets that were neither honoured for transport nor refunded after the airline was suspended from IATA's BSP settlement programme.