Month: January 2021

Despite COVID-19, up to 50,000 Israelis have been flying to Dubai since last November. The UAE is adapting to the new clientele as mutual business interests start to take off.

If there was any way that Dubai could be become even more international than it used to be, it did so following the Abraham Accords peace agreement last August. 

On November 26, the first commercial flight took Israelis officially for the first time to this business-cum-holiday destination across the Arabian desert. Since then, in less than eight weeks, more than 50,000 Israelis have made the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Dubai and four airlines now cater for 15 direct flights a day. Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on transportation companies, especially airports and train stations, because of the travel restrictions implemented by most countries around the world and passengers’ growing fear of travel.

In the aviation industry, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), passenger air transport measured as revenue passenger kilometre was down 94% year-on-year in April 2020, across all regions. Eurostat also observed a dramatic drop in demand for rail transport services. Compared with the second quarter of 2019, the sector experienced a 94% decrease in the number of rail passengers in Ireland, 78% in France, and 77% in Italy. Read More

2020 will go down in the history books as the air transport industry’s most turbulent year to date, with massive fluxes in passenger volumes globally due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Runways emulating plane graveyards served as a visceral reminder of the vulnerable economics of the air transport industry.

Emerging from government-imposed travel bans and nationwide lockdowns during the first half of the year was not enough to prompt travelers to return to the skies en masse. After showing some positive signs over the northern hemisphere summer months, global passenger traffic at the end of November 2020 slumped back down to 48 per cent year-on-year (YoY) from 2019, according to SITA data. Regaining passenger confidence has become a critical factor for airlines to weather the ongoing economic storm. Read More

Many border security agencies aren’t ready to cope with a return to pre-pandemic levels of travel if they have to track additional pieces of information like traveler health. Blame the holdup on a debate about tactics and tech, not just budgetary shortfalls.

The pandemic has drawn governments worldwide’ attention to the need to track the visitors crossing their borders for more than immigration and security reasons. Yet many governments have decades-old technology and lack the flexibility to ingest new data sources such as medical information. Many nations also lack the latest techniques for verifying people’s identities. Read More