The Congo question at check-in: CDC's new flight attestation starts November 3

Starting November 3, 2026, a boarding pass to the United States comes with a question about the Congo.

Every person on board a flight to the US from another country — any airline, any nationality, any route that lands in the US — must present a signed statement that they have not been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during the 21 days before boarding. That includes crew, not just passengers: the original order spoke of “passengers,” and an amended order issued October 28 changed the operative word to “person” precisely to make clear that crew members are covered too. The airline cannot board anyone who does not present one, and it cannot land and disembark passengers in the US without first confirming to the government that every person on board signed.

The requirement is an order signed by the Assistant Secretary for Health on October 22, 2026 and published in the Federal Register on October 27 (91 Fed. Reg. 67582), now amended and republished on October 30 (91 Fed. Reg. 68518). It takes effect at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on November 3.

Two things make it worth understanding before you reach the counter rather than at it. The question is about the DRC even if you never went near the DRC — it is asked of everyone, because the agency says multi-country itineraries “obscure their original point of departure” and cannot be traced reliably. And the signature is a statement to the federal government, with a statute attached to it that has nothing to do with missing a flight.

What the attestation actually is

It asks one question — were you in the DRC at any point in the 21 days before you board — and requires you to affirm that you were not. It may be paper or digital, including an electronic signature, and the airline must review it before boarding and keep a copy for at least 42 days after departure, producing it to the US government on request.

The order’s scope, in its own terms:

• Every flight arriving in the US from a foreign country, “regardless of whether the United States is its final destination or the flight is connecting through the United States en route to another country.” A flight from São Paulo to Tokyo that lands at Dulles is covered — including cargo flights.
• Every person on board, passengers and crew. The original order said “passenger”; the October 28 amended order defines “Person(s)” as “any of the persons (including passengers, air crew, or conveyance operators) on any aircraft destined for the United States from a foreign country,” and expressly covers crewmembers on official duty, “including for activities that involve operation of aircraft or the positioning of crew not operating the aircraft (e.g., on ‘deadhead’ status).” The amendment’s Federal Register notice says this was the point of the change.
• Overflights are not. An aircraft that crosses US airspace without landing at a US airport is outside the order. A domestic flight within the US is not a flight “from a foreign country.”
• Private and general aviation are covered, not just airlines: the order adopts the statutory definition of “aircraft,” which it says includes commercial, general aviation and private aircraft.
• Someone else may sign for you if you are under 18 (a parent or other authorized representative) or unable to sign for yourself by reason of age, or physical or mental impairment.
• The airline owns the translation. A carrier may use a third party, including a translation app, but the order says the airline has “sole legal responsibility to ensure the accuracy of any translation,” and remains responsible for compliance regardless of what any third party did.

Nothing in the order creates an application, a portal or a fee. The form is collected by the carrier at check-in; the government’s leverage is the aircraft’s permission to enter the port and disembark passengers, which the order calls “controlled free pratique.” If a website offers to process or approve your attestation for money, that is not this process.

The 21-day clock, counted

The order defines the arithmetic because it decides who is turned away: day 0 is the day you departed the DRC, day 1 is your first full calendar day outside it, and you may board on day 22.

Presence is defined broadly. It includes connecting through an airport in the DRC even if you never got off the plane or left the terminal, and it includes presence by land or by sea. What does not count is an overflight that does not land.

Who cannot board at all

The attestation is the enforcement mechanism for a rule that already exists. A separate CDC order — the one the attestation order says it operates “in addition to” — suspends the right to introduce certain people into the United States: those who departed from, or were otherwise present in, the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan during the previous 21 days, “regardless of their country of origin,” and expressly including lawful permanent residents. It runs under 42 U.S.C. § 265 and 42 C.F.R. § 71.40, was issued on October 11, 2026, and remains in effect through 4:59 p.m. Eastern on November 10, 2026 (91 Fed. Reg. 65556).

It does not apply to US citizens and US nationals, to members of the armed forces and US government personnel serving overseas (with their spouses and children, subject to assurances), or to people whom customs officers except, with supervisory approval, under their own discretionary authority; CDC can also grant narrow exceptions on humanitarian or government grounds, with conditions attached.

That produces two different situations that are easy to conflate:

• A US citizen or national has not lost the right to enter — the older suspension order does not reach them. But a citizen who was in the DRC within 21 days still cannot truthfully sign the attestation, and the airline cannot board a passenger who cannot sign. From the airline’s side of the door the result is three weeks of waiting, without any formal finding against them.
• A lawful permanent resident who was in any of the three countries within 21 days is inside the older order as well: the right to introduce is suspended, subject to the exceptions it lists. The signature problem is the same, so the practical route is an exception arranged with CDC before check-in rather than a decision made after landing.

The permanent-resident point is recent and sits on a regulation that has an expiry of its own. Until May 22, 2026, § 71.40(f) exempted lawful permanent residents along with citizens. An interim final rule published May 27, 2026 (91 Fed. Reg. 31362) rewrote paragraph (f) to cover only “U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals”; the agency grounded that carve-out in the constitutional right of citizens to return, and said plainly that the rule “will apply to lawful permanent residents.” That amendment carries its own sunset: it ceases to be in effect six months after publication unless extended, and the current text of § 71.40(f) carries an effective-date note reading “May 22, 2026 through Nov. 22, 2026” — five days earlier than six months from the May 27 publication date, because the note runs from the rule’s effective date rather than its publication. Whether the resident rule survives past that date is a live question, not a settled one.

One asymmetry is worth noticing because it will confuse people at the counter: the new attestation asks only about the DRC. Uganda and South Sudan appear in the older suspension order, not on the form.

If you sign something untrue

The attestation is not a formality with no consequence. Three separate layers bear on it.

1. The false-statement statute. The order states that the attestation is “a statement, writing, entry, or other representation made under 18 U.S.C. 1001,” and that the Department of Justice “may prosecute any individual who knowingly and willfully submits a false statement in violation of” that section. The order also lists 42 U.S.C. § 271 and 42 C.F.R. § 71.2 among its enforcement provisions; § 271(a) sets a penalty of a fine of not more than $1,000 or imprisonment of not more than one year, or both, for violating the quarantine regulations.
2. The carrier’s own consequences. Under the amended order’s wording, any person who fails to provide the attestation, or submits false or misleading information, “may face a delay of travel, denial of boarding, or denial of boarding on future travel” — a consequence that outlasts the trip itself.
3. The airline’s exposure. A carrier that boards anyone without a complete, signed attestation can be refused permission to disembark, and the order cites criminal penalties including fines of up to $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for organizations. That is why the check at the gate is not going to be casual, and also why it will be a check of whether the form is filled in — the order defines the airline’s “confirm” duty as review of the face of the attestation, not an investigation of your itinerary.

When it ends

The attestation order is a 45-day instrument, and it now has one end date instead of two. The original order contained a one-day inconsistency: its Federal Register summary set the end at 11:59 p.m. EST on December 18, 2026, while the order’s own action clause said “until December 17, 2026, whichever occurs first.” The amended order issued October 28 and published October 30 (91 Fed. Reg. 68518) ends the disagreement: its summary reads “through 11:59 p.m. EST on December 18, 2026,” and its operative clause now reads “until December 18, 2026, whichever occurs first.” It retains the qualifier that the Secretary may amend or rescind it earlier, and the amendment itself says any extension will be judged on outbreak metrics: case counts, geographic spread, community-transmission indicators and containment capacity.

The older suspension order expires earlier, on November 10, 2026, and has been renewed repeatedly since May — a sequence published in the Federal Register on May 21, May 29 (an amended order), June 25, July 16, August 17, September 16 and October 15. Comments on the current one were due October 30, 2026 (docket CDC-2026-0892). Both instruments can be amended or rescinded at any time at the agency’s discretion, which is not a hypothetical: the attestation order’s own justification notes that public notice of a forthcoming requirement could push people in the DRC to fly early, and that the agency moved quickly for that reason.

So the two dates to hold in mind are different: the three-country suspension comes up for renewal in early November, the worldwide attestation runs through December 18.

Why the DRC, specifically

The order’s factual basis is unusually detailed, and it explains the shape of the rule better than the rule does.

As of October 18, 2026, the DRC reported 9,455 confirmed cases and 4,561 deaths of Ebola disease caused by the Bundibugyo virus, across 66 health zones in eight provinces. The outbreak is centered in Ituri Province but has reached North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uélé, Bas-Uélé, Tshopo, North Ubangi and South Ubangi. CDC describes it as already the largest known outbreak of this virus, and says modeling suggests it could become one of the largest Ebola epidemics recorded without rapid intervention.

The transmission route matters for how you read the rule: this is not an airborne disease. It spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or with contaminated materials, and the incubation period runs 2 to 21 days, with most cases appearing within 4 to 10. People are not contagious before symptoms begin — which is precisely why a 21-day presence question, rather than a temperature check at the gate, is the instrument the agency chose.

Two facts in the order show why it is not theoretical. A physician infected while working in the DRC flew internationally before becoming ill and was diagnosed after arriving in France. And on October 6, 2026, Kenya announced its first case, in a traveler who had flown from Kampala to Nairobi; by October 19 that cluster had reached eight cases. A US citizen working for a humanitarian organization in the DRC tested positive in July.

CDC has also issued travel health notices for the region: Level 4, avoid all travel, for Ituri and Nord-Kivu; Level 3, reconsider nonessential travel, for Haut-Uélé and Tshopo; Level 2, enhanced precautions, for the rest of the DRC and for Uganda; and Level 1 for Nairobi. The agency has raised its internal response to Level 1, the highest in its framework.

If you already have a ticket

• Read your itinerary for a DRC segment, including connections. A technical stop or a change of planes in Kinshasa counts even if you stay airside. If you find one, count 21 days from the departure date and move the booking if you can.
• Expect the form, and expect it to be handled by the airline. Paper or digital is fine. There is no fee, and no federal portal to apply through.
• If you were in the DRC, do not plan around a test. The order’s only mechanism is the signature; it lists no testing alternative and no exception for a negative result. The exemptions it does name are for carriers moving Ebola patients under US government authorization and for individuals granted a CDC exemption on humanitarian or government grounds — emergency medical evacuation is the example given. Those exemptions can come with conditions: precautions during travel, consent to post-arrival monitoring, or self-quarantine after arrival.
• If you are a lawful permanent resident and were in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan, the older order applies to you too, and the exception route runs through CDC: the order contemplates entry under a DHS-approved process that includes “appropriate public health mitigation protocols,” confirmed by a public health assessment at the time of entry. Do not expect the airline to sort it out at the counter.
• Check again close to the date. Both orders expire on short clocks and are renewed by notice, not automatically. The CDC’s travel notice page and the Federal Register are where a change appears first.

What this order does not do

It is not an immigration rule. It does not change who is admissible, and it does not create a new visa or entry requirement; the admission question for people from the three named countries is governed by the older suspension order under § 265. It imposes no test, no vaccination and no temperature check — for the traveler, its only requirement is the signature. And it addresses aircraft, not land border crossings, which the order does not discuss.

What it does do is put a legal statement in the hands of every person boarding a flight to the US, and make the airline the party that checks it. That is a small administrative step with an outsized consequence for the small number of travelers it is actually aimed at.

If a flight of yours does get disrupted — by this or anything else — what the airline owes you is a separate body of law, and how a delay gets blamed is where that starts. The network’s government resources directory collects the agencies named here.

This article is general information about a federal public health order, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for advice about your own situation. Rules for entering the United States differ by status and by port of entry, and immigration consequences vary by individual circumstances. It is AI-written and independently AI-reviewed before publication; the review standard and this article’s findings are recorded in the network’s editorial review log.