The Airline Existential Threat: Face Masks or Extinction

By Robert McGarvey

The nation’s airlines are at a crossroads – indeed, confronting an existential threat – that will decide their near-term fate. Will they live…or die?

It is all about the face mask.

Understand: a face mask probably will not protect the wearer.  What it does is lessen the odds that the wearer will infect others.  A mask protects others around you.

By now, most US carriers say that if you refuse to wear a mask, you will be kicked off the plane and may even be banned.  Delta in fact says it has banned 120 flyers for refusing to comply: “‘Countless studies and medical experts have advised us that masks are an essential response to the virus that will help us reduce transmission,’ Delta CEO Ed Bastian told employees Thursday in an internal memo obtained by CBS News. ‘That’s why we’re taking it very seriously. We’ve already banned 120 flyers from future travel with Delta for refusing to wear masks on board.’”

Delta has also taken steps to define what is an acceptable mask (ones with exhaust valves don’t cut it, for instance). That deserves applause.

Especially because you can get Covid-19 on a plane. Indisputable fact.

And then there is the persistent problem of self-centered, obstreperous flyers who insist they have a right not to wear a mask and loudly refuse to do so.

In some cases, they delay the flight and inconvenience every other passenger.  A Delta flight from Detroit to Atlanta actually turned around and returned to Detroit when a couple passengers refused to comply.  

An American flight caved in when a passenger refused to wear a mask – he cited his alleged HIPAA rights – and then the situation went into flagrant absurdity. Let Travel Pulse tell what ensued: “The aircraft’s captain did speak with [the non-compliant passenger], who said the crew attempted to kick him off the plane, but he remained in his seat. The captain then made an announcement over the public address system saying that any passengers who did not feel safe could get off the plane and re-book their travel without a change fee.”

Wait: so if I am a passenger who feels my health is compromised because a passenger believes he has a right to not wear a mask I can dramatically inconvenience myself by getting off the plane, throwing my schedule into turmoil, and, joy, I won’t have to pay a change fee.

If this were an Ionesco play I’d laugh. It’s not. It’s our lives and this is maddening.

Understand this, American Airlines: If that happened to me I wouldn’t want to change flights, I would demand a refund and I would use every tool in my personal tool box to collect my money.  

Just don’t fly American: that’s the plain take-away.

Understand this too: Airlines have an absolute right to refuse service to any who refuse to comply with their rules unless the person is in a protected class.  Doesn’t that mean people with health conditions that preclude mask wearing? Definitely.  But that does not mean all who claim a qualifying health condition have one.

United, for instance, asks passengers who believe they have a valid condition that makes it impossible to wear a mask to contact the airline in advance and to be prepared to document the condition. Delta tells such passengers to be prepared to go through a “special screening.”  

Which brings us to the existential problem: how many of us will just decide not to fly because so many seem determined to flaunt face mask requirements – and that endangers us. If we feel our health is significantly jeopardized by flying, we won’t, it’s that simple.

Even WHO acknowledges the risks are real.  

There are many more people who want to be mask compliant than who are determined to refuse to wear a mask.  Drive away the mask wearers and that is a fast highway to economic oblivion for carriers.

Why doesn’t the White House step in and order mask wearing in airports and on planes?  That’s exactly what the carriers have hoped would happen. Ditto flight attendants.

But that hope is fanciful.  Trump has sought to duck and weave around Covid-19 from the beginning – even denying it amounted to a significant health threat – and it is highly improbable that he would demand mask wearing on planes. Yes, he backtracked from his mask wearing refusal and personally wore a mask at least once in public and in fact said mask wearing in public places is a good idea. But do not expect him to flatly insist that all of us who can must wear masks on planes and other modes of public conveyance.  He won’t go there.

Not even if this refusal to act endangers the very future of the major US carriers and not even if it endangers the health of millions of us who fly and may find ourselves on a plane with a bozo who refuses to wear a mask because he/she has a “right” not to.

A few short sentences from Trump could stop all this.

Meantime, I plan to continue my flying abstinence.  What about you?