Nine Flight Attendants Sue CDC Over Mask Mandate
Airlines demanding end to masking, testing requirements as we transition from “a global pandemic to a seasonal respiratory virus.”
A group of nine flight attendants is suing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the mask mandate.
They assert that the masks are a health and safety issue, which prevents them from doing their job effectively.
A group of nine flight attendants from six states filed suit on March 24 against the CDC to strike down the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate, arguing forcing them to obstruct their normal breathing harms their health and being required to enforce the mandate endangers aviation safety as tens of thousands of passengers refuse to comply.
The nine plaintiffs work for Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, Southwest, and United. It’s the first legal challenge to the FTMM filed by flight attendants and the second by airline workers. Ten pilots filed a similar lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Flight attendants filed the 61-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado since plaintiff Victoria Vasenden of Southwest Airlines is based at Denver International Airport and several others often work flights in and out of DEN.
“Masks impair our health and reduce flight safety,” said Vasenden of Reno, Nevada. “We are in planes and airports up to 18 hours a day with zero chance of fresh air. Physicians don’t wear masks that long. That’s assault on the brain, organs, and tissues of the human body. Yet, we are expected to ensure all aspects of the flight remain safe, when masks clearly diminish our capacities.”
Several airlines have ended masking requirements, except those specific to either end of the route (e.g., British Airways, Icelandair). In response to the public demands to end masking theater, U.S. Airlines are pressing the administration to end the transportation masking requirement when the current one ends on April 18.
U.S. Airline officials also want to edit Covid-test requirements, especially as covid is now endemic.
“Now is the time for the administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions – including the international predeparture testing requirement and the federal mask mandate – that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment,” the CEOs of 10 U.S.-based passenger and cargo airlines, including Delta, American and United, wrote in a letter to President Biden.
The letter states that while the airlines and their employees supported the federal mask mandate when it was first implemented, especially because it did away with the possibility for airline-by-airline rules in the early days of the pandemic, they now feel it is no longer necessary.
“The persistent and steady decline of hospitalization and death rates are the most compelling indicators that our country is well protected against severe disease from COVID-19,” the letter states. “Given that we have entered a different phase of dealing with this virus, we strongly support your view that ‘COVID-19 need no longer control our lives.'”
One airline official believes signs point to the mask mandate ending soon.
Delta Air Lines Chief Health Officer Henry Ting said that he believes that the federal mask mandate for airports and airplanes will be lifted on “April 18th or shortly thereafter.”
Speaking at CNBC’s Healthy Returns event on Wednesday, Ting said that while he does not know if the mandate will come down on April 18, the CDC, TSA, and the White House are all “looking closely at this” and will “certainly provide a roadmap.”
“We’ve always known from the beginning of the pandemic that all restrictions should be lifted as soon as it’s safe to do so,” Ting said, adding that there is a transition occurring right now from “a global pandemic to a seasonal respiratory virus.”
It is heartening to see that people accept the reality that “zero covid” is a senseless goal. We will see if the Biden administration continues to cling to masking mandates bitterly.
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The steward on my DTW to SEA flight a few days ago gave the usual mask spiel and added “which we hope will be for only a few more weeks”. She also did the ‘mask up between bites’ and ‘sips’ thing, but they did no policing that I noticed.
The shuttle we caught from SEA to our home required masks even though WA and Clallam County have dropped all their mandates – the driver claimed as airport transportation they’re still under the Biden mandate.
I dunno why some/all of them just don’t say “the hell with the big guy – we ain’t doing this no more” … but I suspect one mask nazi steward on a plane and the threat of reporting or a passenger mask karen with a cell phone making a scene is threat enough for them to continue the charade.
Flew Atlanta to Midway on Delta last Thursday – one of the attendants thought she was a prison guard – up and down the aisles yelling at people to pull their masks over their nose. She never let up.
But I guess when Fauci allows he mandate to be lifted, all will be forgiven and we go back to normal. The abusive flight attendants will act like it never happened.
I predict the courts summarily dismiss this suit as they’ve done for other such suits.
OMG! The Nazi Flight Attendants from Hell that would kick you off the plane and threaten to put you on the federal no fly list for refusing to wear a face diaper are now suing the CDC because those same face diapers they are forced to wear are a “health & safety issue”.
Well, cry me a river and pardon me if I say that would be hilarious if it weren’t just so pathetic. Be assured, your behavior won’t be forgotten by many of your customers any time soon.
Well, no. There are flight attendants who think like Pol Pot, and there are flight attendants who think like you. Just like there are school parents who want their kids to learn basics and grow up sane, and school parents who would happily screw up their own kids if the school system weren’t already there to do it for them.
I’ve ever met some mask-Karen truckers.
Bullshit. Every goddamned one of them either acted or supported the forced diaper drama. Fûck them all.
If they didn’t like it, they could have quit their jobs in protest. No, they kept their jobs.
I have not flown since the American Nazi Party instituted the pat downs for Americans when they let international travelers walk on by. You know, the international travelers who flew airplanes into the twin towers and the Pentagon. Those international travelers.
Sympathy for them can be found between shit and syphilis in the dictionary. Stewardesses will get none of these from me.
Fûck them all.
“The letter states that while the airlines and their employees supported the federal mask mandate when it was first implemented, especially because it did away with the possibility for airline-by-airline rules in the early days of the pandemic, they now feel it is no longer necessary.”
“Ooh, what a shiny nose ring,” said the bull calf. “If I had one of those, I bet it would really impress the ladies.”