American Airlines Will Not Require Employees To Be Vaccinated

Originally published on AeroXplorer

While American is incentivizing its staff to get the vaccine it will not enforce a mandate on them. Photo: Andrew Mauro / AeroXplorer

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said the airline is not planning to mandate vaccination for its employees. The decision comes days after other US carriers, United and Frontier, announced plans to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for employees in the next two months. On August 5th, Doug Parker talked about employee vaccine mandates in a podcast interview with the New York Times. During the conversation, Mr. Parker said that American will not require its employees to be fully vaccinated, but would instead push incentives to encourage vaccinations. This decision stands in contrast to United and Frontier, both of which have announced that they will set deadlines for their entire workforces to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

As the United States experiences a surge of cases due to the Delta variant, airlines are feeling the pressure in the last month of the summer. After a strong recovery during the second quarter, rising COVID-19 cases may cause a fall in domestic passenger traffic again, reversing these hard-earned gains. In addition, with government support set to expire in October, airlines could be exposed to significant losses. This is the reason why airlines are beginning to take a hardline position on vaccination. The Delta variant is far more contagious than other previous variants, with the CDC stating that the best line of defense to prevent getting and spreading the disease is getting vaccinated. This is why vaccinating employees, especially frontline ones, has become so crucial.

For a long time American has chosen to avoid vaccine mandates during the politically charged debate. Photo: Getty Images

Nonetheless, airlines still have differing opinions on whether vaccine mandates or incentives are more effective in reaching their goals. The vaccination program in the United States has once again picked up steam. With over 70% of the adult population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine, many frontline staff have already been covered. Recently, the topic of vaccine mandates has been in the news, with companies such as Google, Facebook, Broadway, and many others announcing that all their employees must be vaccinated by a certain date. For most, vaccines are the only way to return to pre-pandemic normalcy, allowing lives to get back on track, and helping businesses recover. Nevertheless, with the debate still underway, it is unclear when or if this can happen.