United Airlines to offer $250 coronavirus test to passengers

United Airlines will offer its customers rapid-response coronavirus tests at the airport, beginning on Oct. 15 with its Hawaii-bound customers from San Francisco.

Passengers will shoulder the cost of the be $250 swab test.

GoHealth Urgent Care and Dignity Health will administer the molecular test before security checkpoints and would make the results ready after 15 minutes.

The international terminal, where airport employees were tested, would be the testing site.

United’s Hawaii-bound customers from San Francisco can also opt for an $80 mail-in test to be conducted at home.

The start of the service was scheduled at the date when Hawaii is set to lift a two-week quarantine requirement on arriving travelers testing negative for Covid-19 within 72 hours of their departure.

Janet Lamkin, United’s California president, noted that the airline is interested in offering the service to other destinations.

Airlines have been urging governments worldwide to consider Covid-19 testing for passengers before international flights as an alternative to travel bans.