Qantas pushes masks as flights resume

Qantas is upgrading its face mask policy for crew in the hope passengers will follow suit.

Qantas crew who deal directly with passengers will be required to wear face masks from Wednesday as flights increase. Picture: David Caird

Qantas and Jetstar will make the wearing of face masks mandatory for cabin crew and customer service officers from Wednesday, in the hope passengers will follow suit.

The upgrade in safety measures is designed to coincide with an increase in flights as borders reopen and more people return to air travel.

To that end, Qantas and Jetstar will roll out specially branded face masks for “customer-facing workers”, for their protection against COVID-19.

Chief customer officer Steph Tully said it expected passengers would follow the lead of crew, and don the masks provided in “fly well” kits on board domestic flights.

“As we see more borders open up and we start to increase flying, we see wearing masks as an important demonstration of our safety leadership,” Ms Tully said.

“We know our customers are looking to our crew particularly to demonstrate that leadership by wearing masks.”

While Qantas remained confident the risk of COVID transmission in-flight was very low, research undertaken by the airline indicated customers were more comfortable when crew wore masks.

Qantas and Jetstar are introducing branded face masks for crew which will become mandatory for all customer-facing employees.

Both Qantas and Jetstar already have a requirement for passengers to wear masks on flights to and from Victoria, as well as on trans-Tasman services and international repatriation flights.

But they were not planning to make mask wearing mandatory among passengers on other domestic services, despite the move to have crew don masks.

Since the start of 2020, 44 cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide in which transmission is thought to have been associated with a journey, out of 1.2 billion passengers carried.

Based on those figures, the International Air Transport Association suggested that worked out to a one in 27 million chance of catching the virus on-board an aircraft.

At this stage Qantas and Jetstar did not plan to make the branded face masks available to passengers who would continue to receive a generic mask and sanitising wipes before boarding.

Ms Tully said the new branded masks were a work in progress.

“We’re working with a number of teams across the airlines but apart from just the aesthetics,

it’s really important we get the functionality design right so that’s the work we’ll do,” she said.

At Friday’s Qantas AGM, CEO Alan Joyce revealed they hoped to be at 50 per cent of pre-COVID domestic capacity by Christmas, following the reopening of east coast borders.

Queensland was expected to reopen to New South Wales in coming weeks, with Victoria to follow in December.