Coronavirus / Loganair to continue face covering policy on flights
AIRLINE Loganair has announced that it will continue to require customers on every flight to wear face coverings unless they are medically exempt when UK Government requirements change later this month.
On Monday UK prime minister Boris Johnson signalled his intention to remove the requirement to wear a face mask in England from 19 July.
That has sparked considerable criticism from public health scientists in the past 24 hours and, while the Scottish Government has yet to announce its plans beyond this month, in a statement yesterday the Holyrood administration said face coverings were “a hugely important mitigation in the fight against Covid-19”.
“At least for a period, we are therefore likely to require the continued wearing of face coverings in certain settings – for example, shops and public transport,” a Scottish Government spokesperson said.
Loganair, which said it was the first airline in the UK to mandate the wearing of face coverings in May 2020 ahead of legal requirements being introduced, said it had decided to set out its policy in light of news of upcoming changes to government policy.
The airline said it had taken account of the possibility of different regulations for public transport across the four home nations.
Its route network spans all of those nations and “a clear policy across the Loganair network is designed to avoid confusion that could otherwise occur”.
Loganair’s chief operations officer Maurice Boyle said: “Safety and security is always Loganair’s top priority.
“We believe that a consistent policy across our route network will provide assurance and confidence for each and every customer – and that confidence has been at the forefront of Loganair’s efforts to fly continuously throughout the pandemic to deliver essential connectivity across the UK.
“Therefore, unless a customer is medically exempt from the need to wear a face covering, we’ll be keeping the requirement to wear one in place on every Loganair flight. We’ll keep this under regular review and communicate future changes when the time is right for those to be made.”
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