How Long Can Airline Mask Mandate Last as Others Loosen Requirements?

As COVID-19 cases are dissipating, cities and school districts across the country are starting to loosen their requirements for face masks, according to a new report by CNN.

But the article begets one big question in everybody’s mind.

Will the federal face mask mandate in airports, on airplanes and all public transportation also be relaxed when it comes up for review again in January of 2022?

That’s what everybody wants to know.

According to CNN, the larger trend in the U.S. right now is to drop face mask requirements. The media outlet noted a series of examples taking place, including Atlanta lifting the mask rule in the city; school districts in two of Florida’s largest counties are going mask-optional; a Pennsylvania state court judge ruled that students can stop wearing masks immediately instead of waiting until January, when Gov. Tom Wolf already planned to lift the mandate; and in Ohio, 65 percent of school districts have lifted face mask mandates.

Schools have large crowds and closed-in spaces – much like airplanes. And school-aged children from 5-11 can now be vaccinated – much like adults.

But there still seems to be some trepidation about lifting the rule on airplanes, even though the Federal Aviation Administration has said that the majority of the 5,000 reports of incidents on planes it has received stem from wearing a mask.

But as much as airlines would love to see the mandate rescinded, especially in light of new safety protocols, they have resigned themselves that it will probably be extended again.

“The safest place you can be is on an airplane, safer than this room I’d argue,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said last month at the U.S. Travel Association’s “The Future of Travel Mobility” conference in Washington, D.C. “The filtration systems, the HEPA filters, it’s the same as in a hospital. … But the masking, that’s probably going to stay around for some time.”

That eventual decision will be up to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We’re on a downward trend. We want to keep going on a downward trend,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “We’re not going to have to be wearing masks forever. But for now, particularly as the CDC recommends, in indoor congregate settings, where you don’t really have a good handle on who is vaccinated and who is not, under those circumstances the CDC still recommends, appropriately, that we wear masks.”