Airlines fall in line on contact tracing data

Most U.S. airlines will now be supplying passenger data to CDC to enable contact tracing for passengers who may have been exposed while traveling to other passengers who were carrying Covid-19.

Delta and United have been providing the data for months, but other airlines had resisted, arguing that it would be a big burden to collect and collate, especially for tickets sold by other vendors. The data involved is names, phone numbers, email and physical addresses. Most of the data is already collected for TSA Secure Flight purposes.

Now, perhaps in hopes that compliance will help push the U.S. to lower restrictions on international travel, the airline members of trade association Airlines For America have agreed to join in. They include, in addition to Delta and United, American, JetBlue, Hawaiian, Alaska and Southwest.