With its expiration looming just over a week away, President Joe Biden's administration plans to extend the federal mask mandate for air travel by another month, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed on Thursday.
The mask mandate on planes, in airports, and on other forms of public transportation had been set to expire after March 18. But Thursday's 30-day extension means travelers will continue to be required to wear masks on planes and in airports through April 18. CNN first reported the news of the extension.
It's the fourth time Biden's administration has extended the mask mandate since it was implemented in January 2021. But by extending it by just 30 days, it's a significantly shorter extension than prior actions – a sign that the mask mandate's days could be numbered.
CNN reports that health officials will review that decision over the next month to decide whether to extend it again – or perhaps eliminate it earlier.
“During that time, CDC will work with government agencies to help inform a revised policy framework for when, and under what circumstances, masks should be required in the public transportation corridor. This revised framework will be based on the COVID-19 community levels, risk of new variants, national data, and the latest science. We will communicate any updates publicly if and/or when they change,” the TSA wrote in a statement.
While the federal mask mandate has only been in place for over a year by executive order, masks have been required on planes by airlines for nearly two years, dating back to the early days of the pandemic.
As COVID-19 cases have plummeted and states and cities have dropped their own masking requirements, the national conversation on masking has shifted since the last time Biden extended the mandate in early December. And with the previous March 18 deadline approaching fast, speculation swirled if this mandate would end next week.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently gave nearly all Americans the go-ahead to ditch masks indoors, citing improving COVID-19 metrics like hospitalizations and strain on hospitals. And Hawaii will end its own statewide mask mandate later this month – the last state with such a requirement in place.
Some public health officials and flight attendants unions expressed misgivings about letting the mask mandate end in March, pointing to the fact that children under 5 are still ineligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine and many Americans remain vulnerable to the virus.
After two years of on-and-off mask requirements, many American now expect to go maskless nearly everywhere … except in airports and on airplanes. That creates a difficult situation for airlines and flight attendants, who have been tasked with enforcing mask usage onboard increasingly unruly planes.
Some flight attendants have pushed back, arguing that the Biden administration should extend the federal mask mandate to protect children under five who still aren’t authorized to receive COVID-19 vaccines as well as vulnerable adults. But as the deadline approached with no clear sign of an extension coming, some flight attendants and other airline employees assumed it would end next week.
Elsewhere, many other countries and even individual foreign airlines have their own masking policies that are not expected to change anytime soon.
This is a breaking news story, check back for updates.
I actually am on favor of keeping the safety precautions a bit longer. I want to travel and to feel safe while I’m doing it. Covid cases are definitely down, but still higher than we’d like.
Let me see here. I can go to Boston Garden located in one of the most pro-mask/pro-mandate states and cities in the country and attend a hockey game with 17k people unmasked for 3 hours but I can’t ride MARTA in Atlanta for an hour sitting by myself without a mask. Or take a plane with a few hundred people. Tell me how this is following the science or is it cratering (spelled correctly) to the FA unions? If the FAs want this lunacy to end then they need to tell the union to end it. I was on a one-hour flight from DC to Portland, ME, a month ago and the FA made 5 separate announcements about mask wearing. On a 50-minute flight. Then asked us foolishly to social distance as we exited the plane. Complete stupidity and paranoia. End the mask mandate Biden. Do one thing right please. Just one thing.
What about the proof of a negative covid test on returning back from another country? I would sure like to see that go.
No word on that requirement yet.
I travel every other month, this is becoming such nonsense. There is NO science behind this. The Flight Attendants want this to go away just like the rest of us. The entire mask mandate across the US is over. Why do the airlines have to be different
There is ZERO reason for this extension. IF the air filters on the plane are as good as they say, and it’s circulated every 2-3 minutes, then masks won’t matter when we are all eating for 5-10 minutes with our masks off. It should be optional. It has been proven that masks don’t work as well as they thought.