The Airline Catering Association (ACA) and the International Flight Services Association (IFSA) jointly developed the COVID-19 ACA/IFSA Guideline, which supersedes the former individual ACA and IFSA guides, to support global airline and airline catering industries in resuming or continuing safe operations.
Robin Padgett, Divisional Senior Vice President, dnata catering, said: "Our industry is inherently safe, widely regulated and regularly audited by the industry and our partners. The combined ACA/IFSA guidelines provide another layer of guidance, providing an industry-wide reference point to complement the strict COVID-19 procedures and processes implemented by us at the global and local level.
"Importantly, passengers can remain confident that our products and services are provided with the utmost attention to health and safety."
Launched in early February, the ACA/IFSA guidance was developed by representatives of caterers, airlines, suppliers and industry consultants. The document proposes several guiding principles to ensure that a safe, best-practice approach is applied to all business activities, and takes a pragmatic approach in implementation, highlighting guidance on the ways in which individual locations and situations can best be re-engineered to meet the updated health safety standards. It also provides direction for risk assessment and mitigation.
The full document can be read here.
The guidelines complement dnata’s own stringent COVID-19 safety measures implemented at the beginning of the pandemic. These include widespread temperature testing, social distancing within the facilities, restricted unit access and increased supplier audit.
