United CEO: Vaccination Mandate for Domestic Travel Unlikely

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby thinks that a vaccination mandate for domestic travel is unlikely. During an interview with CNN’s Victor Blackwell, “it’s a government question, but I suspect that it won’t happen domestically”. Scott Kirby isn’t the only one who thinks that a domestic vaccination mandate isn’t happening.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian also thinks that a vaccine mandate on domestic flights isn’t going to happen. However, there are a growing number of companies that are now requiring vaccinations.

Company Mandate Instead of Vaccination Requirement on Domestic Flights

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden met with Kirby and other executives that required vaccination on their workers. Scott Kirby said that the president “asked us to do everything we could with fellow CEOs or anyone we were in contact with to encourage others to do the same thing”.

United Airlines announced that their unvaccinated employees should get vaccinated by October 25. The airline has a total of 67,000 employees in the US. And if they refuse to get vaccinated, they’d be removed from their job.

According to Kirby, employer mandates can help with the US vaccination rate. He believes that it can reach 80-90% if employers start requiring vaccinations.

So far, United is the only airline that will fire unvaccinated employees if they don’t meet the deadline. Frontier, will allow their unvaccinated employees to work, but only if they can show a negative COVID 19 test. On the other hand, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines said that they are not going to require vaccination on employees.

In an internal memo from Southwest Airlines CEO Garry Kelly, the airline will “continue to strongly encourage” vaccination. As for American Airlines, the airline incentivized its vaccinated employees. The airline is giving vaccinated employees an extra day of vacation for 2022.

However, Delta has a different approach. The airline will only hire vaccinated individuals. There is no vaccine mandate on their current pool of employees.