IATA calls for removal of face masks on flights

MANILA, Philippines — The chief of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called for the scrapping of the use of face masks on flights, but local airline industry players have mixed feelings about it.

IATA director general Willie Walsh said many governments around the world have made a dramatic shift in the past weeks to ease or remove COVID-19-related travel restrictions and requirements as the disease becomes endemic.

Walsh added that it is vital that this process continues and even accelerate in order to quickly restore damaged global supply chains and enable people to resume their lives.

“One step to encourage a return to normality is to remove mask mandates for air travel. It makes no sense to continue to require masks on airplanes when they are no longer being required in shopping malls, theaters or offices,” he said.

“Aircraft are equipped with highly sophisticated hospital quality filtration systems and have much higher air flow and air exchange rates than most other indoor environments, where mask mandates already have been removed,” he added.

A local airline official, who requested anonymity, told The STAR that while the move would be a welcome development for the aviation industry, it is “still not that necessary at the moment” for the Philippines.

With the fight against the virus not yet over, the official argued that face masks still offer a layer of protection and its use does not provide that much discomfort while inside the aircraft.

Another airline official said the removal of the rule for passengers to wear face masks on flights would still take quite some time from happening among local carriers, and such decision would be based on health officials and the government’s pandemic task force.

Meanwhile, Air Carriers Association of the Philippines (ACAP) executive director Roberto Lim told The STAR different conditions are prevailing in various countries, such as level of vaccination and health department policies.

“Willie Walsh is identifying a trend, a shift, but not everyone is in the same condition,” Lim said.

“Hong Kong still subjects arriving international passengers to two weeks of quarantine. Japan and Korea are practically closed to leisure travel,” he added.

More important for the ACAP at present is to see a sustained opening of domestic transport, according to Lim.