Is mask mandate urgent for air travel?

Shortly after the US Capitol was stormed, an American Airlines Group Inc flight from Washington to Phoenix faced its own insurrection. Despite entreaties from flight attendants, some passengers belligerently refused to wear masks and chanted “fight for Trump” and “USA!” The situation became so tense that the pilot took to the intercom and threatened to “put this plane down in the middle of Kansas and dump people off” if they didn’t behave.
It wasn’t the only flight departing from Washington that faced unrest from outgoing President Donald Trump’s supporters.
And as President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration looms, flight crews are bracing for more. In anticipation, the Federal Aviation Administration promised to strengthen enforcement against unruly passengers.
These are good steps, but insufficient on their own. What’s needed is a
federal regulation mandating masks in airports and on airplanes for the duration of the pandemic.
The problem has been building for some time. Last April, United Airlines Holdings Inc became the first company in the US to require flight attendants to wear face coverings. Others soon followed. Although flight crews supported the idea, they didn’t think it went far enough. So the Association of Flight Attendants, a 50,000-member union, wrote to then-Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao requesting that her department issue an emergency regulation requiring face coverings for passengers on “all modes of public transport.”
That the airlines needed help managing this problem was obvious. By late spring, mask-wearing had become deeply politicised, and tensions were spilling over into cabins mid-flight, often creating dangerous conflicts between passengers and crews. By mid-May, United was asking its flight attendants to use their “de-escalation skills” when passengers declined to wear face coverings. In one case, a dispute became so intense that the captain descended to the wrong altitude, putting an entire plane at risk.
Even in less fraught situations, these conflicts have simply created a hostile and unsafe work environment. Doing battle with culture-warriors resistant to public-health guidance in the midst of a pandemic just isn’t part of a flight attendant’s job description. With little other recourse, and worried that matters were slipping out of control, the airlines started banning noncompliant passengers outright. As of January 1, United had banned 370 passengers; Delta Air Lines Inc, around 600.
That’s hardly an ideal solution. Yet the government has been all but absent in this dispute. In July, the Trump administration issued voluntary guidelines that encouraged airlines to mandate face coverings. But without the force of regulation, they didn’t accomplish much.
In October, the Department of Transportation definitively turned down requests for a federal mandate, noting that it “embraces the notion that there should be no more regulations than necessary.”
It seems to have an odd definition of “necessary.” A mask mandate was obviously needed in October; it’s even more urgent now. As last week’s events demonstrated, political symbols can be dangerous flash points in a cramped environment like an airline cabin. And few symbols have become more potent over the past year — thanks in part to the president’s own example — than face coverings.
—Bloomberg