Airlines split on whether to mandate Covid vaccines for employees

US airlines are increasingly divided over whether to require their flight attendants, pilots and other employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19. United and Hawaiian Airlines this month said their US employees, a total of some 73,000 people, must get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Alaska Airlines said it’s considering a similar mandate for its some 20,000 employees if the FDA gives one of the vaccines full approval, a step that’s expected next month. Other carriers, including Delta, American Airlines, Southwest and JetBlue have repeatedly said they are encouraging, but aren’t requiring that staff are vaccinated. Delta requires new hires to be vaccinated, however. Labor unions for pilots at those airlines say vaccines should remain voluntary for their members. After announcements from United and Hawaiian, unions at airlines that aren’t mandating vaccines said pilots reached out with concerns about what would happen if their carriers followed suit. The concerns highlight potential challenges carriers could face if they also mandate vaccinations. The carriers are all grappling with the recent surge in Covid cases in the US as the delta variant takes hold and starts to weigh on air travel demand — just as the battered industry was starting to regain its footing. More than a dozen large US companies have mandated Covid vaccines for some or all of their employees. A mandate “could put an airline at odds with their unions,” said Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines. But higher cases of Covid could impact airline reliability if enough workers are out sick, at a time when they are already stretched thin. “You don’t want to touch the third rail, but you do want to make sure you have an operation,” said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former airline executive.<br/>