On February 24, 2022, a flight attendants’ union is urging the Biden administration to extend a rule that requires passengers to wear face masks on airlines.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA stated in a statement to Bloomberg that allowing the mask requirement to expire on March 18 would put some passengers in danger, including children under the age of 5 who haven’t been vaccinated. About 50,000 flight attendants are represented by the union, who work for 20 different airlines.
“We have every expectation that the mask mandate will be extended for the near term,” the union said. “The conditions in aviation are the same. Our youngest passengers do not yet have access to the vaccine.”
Despite the fact that several airlines enacted their own face mask regulations in 2020, the Biden administration’s federal face mask rule entered into effect in February 2021 and has been delayed twice since then. People who do not wear masks on planes, trains, buses, or ships, as well as in airports, train and bus stations, and ports, may be punished, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
The TSA’s mask requirement is still set to expire on March 18, according to TSA spokesman Patricia Mancha, who talked to The New York Times on Tuesday.
“If there is a change to halt or extend the mask requirement, we will make an announcement,” she said in an email. “As of now, nothing new to share.”
As the number of Omicron-related cases declines across the country, many state and municipal governments are abandoning face mask regulations.
Face masks have been linked to commercial airplane disruptions, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
According to the FAA, there have been 607 reports of rowdy passengers this calendar year as of Feb. 22, with 397 of those occurrences involving face masks. There were 5,981 reports of rowdy passengers on airlines in 2021, with 4,290 occurrences using face masks.
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