Qantas wants national approach to mandatory Covid vaccination for aviation workers

Qantas has called for vaccination to be mandatory for aviation workers to help get Australia moving again.

Qantas crew before boarding a domestic flight. The airline wants vaccination to be mandatory for all aviation workers. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

Qantas has called for vaccination to be mandatory for all aviation workers in Australia and stressed that a “national approach is needed”.

In a group statement, the airline said they had lobbied governments for their workers to have priority access to the Covid-19 vaccine, and offered staff time off to get the jab.

New South Wales, South Australia and New Zealand had already made vaccines mandatory for aviation workers supporting international services, and other states were considering the move, but Qantas said there needed to be one rule for all.

“Without a national approach, we’ll wind up with a patchwork of rules between the borders that our people cross multiple times a day,” said the statement.

“This is something national cabinet is considering along with possible vaccine mandates in other sectors. To put it simply, the Qantas Group supports vaccination because we’re focused on creating the safest environment we can.”

A recent survey by the Transport Workers Union revealed just one in two aviation workers had been vaccinated to date, and almost half of those had only received their first shot.

Qantas was conducting its own survey of employees to assess vaccination status, after “strongly encouraging workers” to get immunised.

“While all the data shows that the risk of Covid transmission on-board aircraft remains very low, and there are many safeguards at airports, nothing reduces the risk to health like the vaccines approved for use in Australia,” said the statement.

“That’s critical for our frontline teams, who come into contact with thousands of people each day.”

The airline said they needed to guard against severe disruption, and had already seen how just one Covid-positive employee could inadvertently shut down a freight facility or passenger terminal.

“These are some of the key reasons why we believe a Covid vaccine should be a requirement for all aviation workers in Australia,” the statement said.

Australian and International Pilots Association president Murray Butt said anything that facilitated people getting back to their occupation as a pilot sooner rather than later would be supported by AIPA.

Qantas has stopped short of following the lead of smaller airline Alliance, which has taken matters into its own hands, ordering all employees to be vaccinated or face displinary action.

The move is yet to be tested in court, but unions have joined calls for all aviation workers to be vaccinated.

Virgin Australia backed Qantas’s stance, saying the airline was “supportive of a nationally consistent and government-led vaccine mandate for all airline employees doing operational work”.

In a recent email to employees, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said the vaccination rollout would “turn the tide on the pandemic” and bring an end to state border closures and lockdowns.

“There is an end point to all of this and it’s not far away,” Mr Joyce wrote.

He previously described Qantas as one of the hardest hit companies by the Covid-19 pandemic, after losing $16bn in revenue and facing a second consecutive annual loss in excess of $2bn.

International flights are scheduled to resume in December but much doubt remains as to whether borders will be open by then.

Captain Butt said pilots were hopeful some level of international flying would get underway at that time to countries such as the US and the UK where the majority of the population was vaccinated.

“I’ve been talking to my colleagues in the US and for them it’s just business as usual,” he said.

“We may see a start (to international flying) in December but it certainly won’t be back to pre-Covid levels for some time.”