Southwest Airlines Co.’s Chairman and Chief Government Gary C. Kelly sent a letter addressed to President Joe Biden on Tuesday to ask his administration to “refrain from imposing any federal mandate to require a pre-departure COVID-19 test for air travel within the US.”
The letter was sent in response to a statement made by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who recently stated that there’s an “active conversation” going on with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about potentially mandating coronavirus tests before domestic flights as a way to combat the pandemic.
He also wrote the pre-flight testing for domestic travel would strain Southwest’s “limited national testing capacity” that “is already struggling to meet demand, especially for people of limited means or those in so-called ‘testing desserts.’”
The CEO went on to note that outside of the money that would be needed to test all Americans before they board a flight, the mandate if passed could put “jobs at risk” and “lead to more interactions between Customers and Employees.”
Moreover, Kelly’s letter suggested {that a} mandate for COVID-19 tests before home flights might come a little too late in light of rising vaccination rates and new coronavirus cases trending downward. Data from the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard show positive cases have been on the decline since mid-January.
Airline union executives signed the letter in support of Kelly’s stance, together with the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, the Transport Workers Union of America, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Southwest, like many different commercial airways, has carried out health and safety measures that include enhanced cleaning procedures, HEPA filtration methods and necessary face masks wear for staff and passengers together with social distancing.
Before Kelly’s letter was sent out, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian expressed criticism against coronavirus testing for domestic flights in an interview with the Associated Press on Monday.
“The level of travel that we are carrying domestically within 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,” he told the news outlet. “And we don’t have the facility or the technology or capabilities to be administering or monitoring domestic testing.”
