The chief executive officer of Southwest Airlines urged in a letter to the Biden administration Tuesday to refrain from mandating COVID-19 tests before domestic flights, warning it could place “jobs at risk.”
CEO Gary Kelly raised issues that a plan to verify prior testing would “lead to more interactions between Customers and Employees,” according to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The Southwest CEO also sent the letter to the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kelly’s primary concern stemmed from the additional costs required to conduct testing pre-departure, adding the measure could affect customers with limited access to testing sources.
Southwest’s own national testing capacity is “already struggling to meet demand, especially for people of limited means,” he said.
The letter was in response to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s latest proposals. He floated the idea with CDC officials about potentially mandating COVID-19 tests before domestic flights as a way to combat the pandemic, Axios reported.
The CDC updated international flight rules in January requiring any traveler coming from outside the country to test negative for COVID-19 within three days of travel or present proof of recovering from the virus.
The risk of contracting COVID-19 while wearing a surgical mask on a plane is low due to the efficient air circulation inside the cabin, according to a Defense Department study from October 2020.
The risk of spread was so low that a person wearing a mask on a plane would have to sit next to a masked infectious passenger for at least 54 hours to be potentially at risk of exposure, the study found.
The airline industry has been struck by immense losses since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, as the industry has already received more than $40 billion in federal aid to protect employee payrolls, and more federal spending is reportedly on the way.
The CEO of Delta Air Lines has also spoken against measures to implement required pre-departure testing on domestic flights in the United States.
“The level of travel that we are carrying domestically in the U.S. — not just Delta, but across the industry — would be substantially reduced from today’s already low levels if domestic testing was required,” Ed Bastian told the Associated Press. “And we don’t have the facility or the technology or capabilities to be administering or monitoring domestic testing.”
