We thought it would never happen, and some even predicted that the obligation to wear a mask when flying was here to stay – but it hasn’t! Some airlines have decided to stop requiring their passengers to wear masks. A movement that’s set to gain momentum?
British Airways says no to the mask…then backtracks. Jet2 persists
Two days ago, British Airways announced the end of mandatory face masks on some of its flights, causing quite a stir on the web.
Unfortunately for passengers, the airline did a last-minute turnaround. A member of the airline reported on the famous FlyerTalk forum:
“We’ve been told an issue which they can’t disclose has arisen so masks will remain mandatory on all flights until further notice“
.
It’s easy to imagine that if this obligation can be lifted, its implementation will require a number of operational adaptations that merely postpone what now seems to be an inescapable event.
While all restrictions have been lifted in the UK since the end of last week, and Heathrow airport announced that wearing a mask would now be optional, British Airways quickly followed suit, announcing through its Operations Director that :
“We are working on these issues and, from Wednesday March 16, customers will only be required to wear a mask on board our flights if the destination they are travelling to requires it.”
His Virgin Atlantic counterpart immediately followed suit.
“As we learn to live with Covid and the legal requirement to wear a face mask has been abolished in England, we believe that our customers should have the personal choice of whether or not to wear a mask on board, on routes where international mask regulations do not apply .”
“This policy will be introduced gradually, starting with our Caribbean services out of Heathrow and Manchester airports, and we encourage everyone to respect other passengers’ mask preferences.”
But while British Airways’ announcement has been widely noticed and reported, it’s not the first airline to have dropped the mask in the UK, since Jet2, a British low-cost carrier, had already announced a similar decision back on March 1.
We can imagine that, given the size of its network, British Airways must have had to make more adjustments to its procedures than its colleague, but there is no doubt that many airlines will follow suit in the future.
It remains to be seen how quickly, as not all airlines have their hands as free as the British one.
Who can lift the requirement to wear a mask on board a plane?
In fact, it’s all a question of knowing where the obligation to wear a mask comes from, as its removal follows mechanically from it.
There are rare cases where the obligation to wear a mask was the sole responsibility of the airline. This was the case in the early days of COVID for most airlines, who took these precautionary measures on their own before governments imposed them.
In fact, this has long been a real problem in the United States. The obligation came from the airlines, who had such difficulty enforcing it that they asked the government to impose it, so as to have a legal basis for taking action against non-compliant passengers. And yet…in order to understand the extent to which passengers reject the mask
More than a year ago, we also announced that Cathay Pacific was making the mask optional in business and first, believing that the social distancing was sufficient. This would seem to indicate that wearing a mask was not a legal requirement.
In the same way, last autumn SAS announced the end of mandatory face masks on flights between Scandinavian countries, something made possible by the fact that masks have never been compulsory there, and that it took this decision when it considered the risk low enough. However, it was only valid for the countries concerned, and is an excellent example of how things work.
In fact, there are two criteria to take into account here: the legislation of the airline’s country and that of the destination country.
If a country decides to lift the mask requirement, domestic flights will be carried out without masks, if the airline so decides (an airline can impose masks in the absence of any legal obligation). This means that British Airways or SAS can operate domestic flights without masks, if they like.
Then there’s the legislation of the destination country: if the destination country imposes a mask, then they will be obliged to comply with it. In the case of British Airways, for example, we might think that its flights to France would have been “masked” and its flights between France and the UK would have been “unmasked”.
It’s also conceivable that a flight between London and Stockholm could be made without a mask.
So in most cases, airlines will have to wait for their national regulations to evolve before they can decide whether or not to lift the mask requirement.
Unless they disobey.
KLM chooses to boycott the law
This is the path KLM has chosen, to everyone’s surprise. Indeed, it stated:
“The industry considers this approach inappropriate, given the stage of the pandemic. What’s more, it is at odds with European and international developments, which we are following closely. As explicability and proportionality continue to decline, we are seeing an increase in misunderstanding among our passengers and a growing number of more serious incidents with ‘unruly’ passengers, which can undermine flight safety.”
As well as
“We find it disappointing that the use of face masks during boarding and throughout the flight is still being considered by the Dutch government, when this measure has been abandoned throughout the Netherlands.“
As a result, KLM has decided to stop enforcing the mask requirement as of March 23. It was joined on this point by three other Dutch airlines: its subsidiary Transavia, TUI Netherlands and Corendon.
And TUI drives the nail in:
“Safe travel for our passengers and staff is our top priority. We urge the cabinet to make the requirement to wear a face mask a recommendation. We no longer want to monitor compliance with the requirement to wear a face mask on board.“
For the record, although masks are no longer required in enclosed spaces in France, an airplane is much safer from a health point of view than any store, bar or restaurant, despite the SNCF CEO’s assertion that it was impossible for a plane to draw air from outside, and whether this was deliberate misinformation or just plain incompetence remains to be seen.
We can expect more and more airlines to say goodbye to the mask, legally or otherwise, in the months and weeks ahead.
Bottom line
As the restrictions are lifted, airlines want to do away with the mask requirement. But even more surprisingly, some have decided to speed things up by boycotting the law.
And what does this inspire you?
Image : passenger with mask on plane by H_Ko via Shutterstock