Today, October 3rd, Air New Zealand unveiled its policy requiring all passengers on its international flights to be vaccinated. Coming into effect in February of 2022, the airline is one of the first to announce such a requirement for its passengers. With Qantas expected to have a similar policy in place shortly, can we expect other airlines to follow?
Starting down under
It began in early September with news that Qantas intends to ban unvaccinated passengers from traveling internationally with the carrier. As reported by Simple Flying, airline chief Alan Joyce stated:
“Qantas will have a policy that internationally we’ll only be carrying vaccinated passengers. Because we think that’s going to be one of the requirements to show that you’re flying safe and getting into those countries. We’re hoping that can happen by Christmas.”
It’s been just under a month, and the Australian airline has yet to release a hard policy on vaccination requirements for its passengers.
However, Air New Zealand today took a big leap ahead when it unveiled its own vaccine mandate for international travelers. While there are still some finer details to be worked out, including exemption qualifications and a list of approved vaccines, it seems like the airline is the first to implement a (mostly) clear policy.
Could this be the beginning of a trend?
The big question here is if this is just the start of a much larger trend. Will other airlines be looking to implement similar policies?
At this point, it’s difficult to know for sure how things will unfold. Of course, we’ve already seen airlines around the world mandate COVID vaccinations for employees. United Airlines was one of the first major carriers to implement such a policy with strict deadlines. Reporting on the success of its mandate, the airline said in a statement:
“Our vaccine policy continues to prove requirements work. In less than 48 hours, the number of unvaccinated employees who began the process of being separated from the company has been cut almost in half, dropping from 593 to 320.”
Of course, mandating vaccinations for an airline’s own employees and having that same requirement for its passengers are two very different scenarios.
I presume airpoints refunds will be made to those who elect to no longer use your services, and fly friendlier skies?
— Dame Jane Morgan 🇳🇿 (@JaneMorganNZ1) October 2, 2021
Politics and economics
Whether or not these types of policies are more widely adopted will likely come down to politics and economics. For some airlines, it will depend on the home country and their respective government’s stance on the matter. For airlines in other countries, it may also depend on economics and if they can afford a potential drop in passengers, who would instead undergo constant preflight testing than get the vaccine.
With both Australia and New Zealand having COVID Zero approaches, we can see that these governments would strongly support their home airlines in implementing vaccine mandates for passengers. At the same time, it’s a little harder to see this working with airlines in the United States- where personal freedoms are taken much more seriously amid an environment of constant legal challenges to anything that may infringe on these freedoms.
What do you think? Will other airlines also adopt similar requirements? Should they? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.
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