Qantas to lift mask requirement on some international flights

Qantas says it will soon allow passengers to travel without masks on some international flights, even though face coverings remain compulsory on all domestic services.

Australian airports will remove mask requirements from Saturday after state and territory chief health officers recommended on Tuesday that mandates were “no longer proportionate” for terminals, given masks were optional in most other public settings.

A Qantas Boeing 737-800 flight from Adelaide lands in Sydney in September 2020.Credit: Getty

A Qantas spokesman said on Wednesday that the next step should be to follow many other countries by removing the state, territory and federal laws making masks compulsory on domestic and in-bound international flights.

He said the airline would soon lift the requirement to wear a mask on flights to foreign destinations where they were optional, including the US, Britain and Europe. The change means some passengers will need to wear masks on some legs of their journeys – such as a domestic connection or stopover in Singapore en route to London – but not others.

“We appreciate some of our customers may find mask requirements confusing, particularly when they have connecting flights, and we’re doing our best to help them prepare for their flights,” the Qantas spokesman said.

“Studies show the risk of transmission inside aircraft cabins is very low due to the air being refreshed every few minutes, in addition to forward-facing seats and HEPA filters which capture 99 per cent of airborne particles.”

The aviation industry says there is a low risk of catching COVID-19 on a plane because of the effective air filtration systems. A Boeing study found that sitting next to someone who coughs on a plane was the same as sitting two metres away from them inside a building.

However, a study published in the Journal of Travel Medicine last year found that wearing masks reduces the risk even further.

Qantas presently requires all international passengers to prove they are vaccinated against COVID-19, but there is no airline or government vaccine mandate on domestic flights.

Epidemiologists had mixed responses to the changes to mask rules for long-haul flights, but they agreed the time was right to lift the requirement in airport terminals.

Mask wearing on public transport – which is compulsory in all jurisdictions except for the Northern Territory – must remain, they said.

Head of Monash University’s epidemiological modelling unit Associate Professor James Trauer said international flights were among the most high-risk settings, so he believed it would be safer to keep the mandate in force.

“Aeroplane cabins are a particularly high-risk environment because of the recirculated air,” Trauer said. “You’ve also got people in very close proximity, and you’re likely to have some people with COVID ... it’s probably one of the last places that you’d remove the requirements.”

Deakin University epidemiology chair Professor Catherine Bennett stressed that people could still wear masks if they wanted to be cautious on planes, and advised them to use N95 masks.

Associate Professor James Trauer.

But she said it made sense to remove the mask requirement in environments no longer deemed high-risk. She said the HEPA air filters used in plane cabins were extremely effective at improving ventilation.

“I think people will probably still choose to wear masks, but they don’t wear masks all the time anyway – while they’re eating, or they may slip off while ... they’re sleeping, so it’s not a perfect check,” she said.

Bennett said she still supports mask-wearing on public transport, but it made sense to drop mask requirements in airport terminals, where the risk of COVID-19 transmission was similar to a shopping centre.

“If you’re stuck in a queue for a long time or waiting in a terminal in a crowded seating area, the advice would be wear a mask; carry a mask with you,” Bennett said. “But it doesn’t mean you have to have a one-size-fits-all rule for the whole terminal. There are people who, for instance, will have a cup of coffee with no one else around them.”

Trauer agreed it was no longer crucial to wear masks in terminals.

“We can pull back on some of the measures that are designed to reduce community transmission because we’re heading rapidly towards ... an endemic state, which means people will tend to get infected every two or three years,” he said.

Australian Airports Association chief executive James Goodwin said the end of terminal mask mandates would “assist airport staff by allowing them to carry out their busy roles without the need to monitor the use of masks”.

“Masks have not been required in supermarkets, shopping centres and many other indoor public areas for some time, so this now brings airports in line with those venues and avoids confusion for travellers,” he said.

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