The headline in the Anchorage Daily News on the new Dunleavy travel policy from the Lower 48 and elsewhere said the state would soon be requiring travelers to be tested for COVID-19 before getting on a flight to Alaska.

It said, “State will lift mandatory quarantine for travelers, instead requiring they be tested before flying to Alaska.”

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he wants every person flying to Alaska to be tested for COVID-19 within three days of getting on a flight, but when he announced this new rule Friday he said it would not be mandatory.

People who arrive without a clean bill of health will either need to get tested at the airport or agree to a 14-day quarantine on the honor system, the rule that has been in place since the pandemic hit.

Dunleavy clearly doesn’t want to say he is requiring anyone to do anything. He’d rather phrase it as a suggestion for political reasons. It’s an error that’s going to create confusion for travelers to Alaska. It would be better if he actually made it a requirement, but there are problems with that as well that I’ll get to.

Listening to his presentation, it was clear that if travelers don’t follow his suggestion, the most inconvenient experience imaginable will await them once they reach the 49th state.

Part of the master plan seems to be designing the process so that new arrivals without a test will spend lots of quality time hanging around the airport.

Dunleavy is assuming that travelers will want to avoid the nightmare on the ground and make sure they get tested in advance. That assumes that people will heed this warning. If travelers in Seattle, Portland and other cities that fly direct to Alaska are told that without a test they will have to wait 6 hours or 12 hours or 18 hours at the Anchorage or Fairbanks airports, leaving it as a suggestion will work.

But more than a few people will show up at the departure gate without a test and without a clue.

“We’re going to strongly, strongly encourage people to get tested before they come here,” Dunleavy said. “Because it they come off the plane without a test, it may take a while for them to leave the terminal before they’re tested and get the results. So it’s going to be more of an inconvenience, just because of the nature of the tests and the time it takes for the tests to determine if one is negative or positive.”

How many hours are people going to have to wait? Don’t expect anything like the Alaska Airlines 20-minute baggage guarantee.

Suppose a large group of people need tests in an airport, Dunleavy said, and that a lot of people on one flight somehow mysteriously lost their test results or forgot them or never got tested in the first place. Forget for a second, that the idea of a significant number of people “losing” their test results while in flight is ridiculous.

“If we don’t have the testing available for some reason at that moment, maybe we ran out or there’s just so many people wanting to get tested—you’re going to end up staying in the terminal quite a long time, and/or going to quarantine,” he said. “So this is why we’re asking, asking that they get the test before they come here.”

“We will have testers here at our terminals, but that’s really for somebody that had the tests, got through security at their point of departure and for some reason can’t find the test, can’t find the test results. And so they get on the plane, they come to Alaska, and they don’t have the test results in hand. Our contractors who are assisting us, will have a conversation with them, will set up a test for them, but it could take a while, it’s going to somewhat inconvenient.”

“Get your test before you come and for some reason you lost the test or there’s some glitch that just, just didn’t make it happen, we will give you an option of a test or an option of a 14-day quarantine when you come to Alaska,” he said.

There are practical problems here with following Dunleavy’s suggested approach.

Tests are not as widely available and not as quickly processed as they need to be to make this work for everyone flying to Alaska. There are still many places where tests require a health care provider referral and getting a test returned in 72 hours is not always possible. There are questions about the accuracy of the rapid tests now being used in many locations.

What happens when a newly arrived passenger gets tested at an airport and is found to have COVID-19? That passenger can’t get back on a plane. And other people would have been exposed to that person. "If you test positive, we’ll work with you on how we can deal with your health issue,” Dunleavy said. That’s easy enough to promise now, but once cases occur it will be a tough problem to deal with.

Dunleavy said his Friday presentation was from the “30,000-foot level,” which is apparently not the same as the 10,000-foot level, the 20,000-foot level or the 50,000-foot level, other options plucked from the cliche bag by speakers who don’t want to be responsible for whatever he or she is talking about.

When and if widespread Lower 48 testing becomes available to anyone who plans to travel to Alaska—with rapid results—a policy of requiring pre-flight COVID-19 tests within 72 hours, would make sense.

Dunleavy needs to get over his reluctance to require tests. Trying to get around this by advertising how inconvenient it will be for travelers is hardly a way to get full compliance. Even if when people book reservations they are told to “get a test or else,” some will not comply.

As JFK famously said when a U-2 pilot in Alaska wandered into Siberia during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “There’s always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.”

Since there will be people flying without having been tested, passengers who do get tested will wonder how many of those who haven’t been tested are on the same plane and how many may be infected with COVID-19 and spreading it to others while taking the 30,000-foot route to Alaska.

The flight restrictions and quarantine rules enacted two months ago are the main reasons why COVID-19 cases have been limited in Alaska. The best way to make passengers more comfortable flying to Alaska is to tell them that everyone on board has tested negative. That’s not going to happen with the policy that starts June 5.