LONDON – Airlines are facing a scourge of passengers traveling with forged Covid-19 health certificates.
The documents are often the Covid-19 test results required by many countries upon arrival. The trade association of the International Air Transport Association says it has tracked false certificates in multiple countries, from France to Brazil, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Border control authorities and police have also reported arrests of people selling documents in the UK, Spain, Indonesia and Zimbabwe, among others.
The problem is that international flights are more common than domestic flights, which typically don’t require certification at this point. Airlines more dependent on cross-border travel, especially those operating in Europe, are increasingly alarmed as they look forward to summer, when they still hope demand will return.
The proliferation of false health certificates is exposing a logistical blind spot as airlines rush to navigate post-pandemic travel standards and redesign their systems to facilitate compliance – and boost demand. Airlines say their staff are not equipped to handle and check all the new health certificates needed and that the problem will only get worse when some countries start asking for vaccination certificates as well.
At Brussels Airlines, employees have shared false certificates they encountered – including one from an incident last week – to keep up to date with the techniques used by fraudsters.