No jab, no fly. Qantas CEO insists on vaccinations for international travel.
Earlier in the year, Qantas warned Aussies that international flights were unlikely to resume before July 2021 and then followed up that news with a revised October 2021 date. (Featured image: Photo by Pascal Renet from Pexels)
However, between those announcements Qantas CEO Alan Joyce stated that Qantas was planning on changing their terms and conditions for flying so as to include compulsory vaccination if you want to get on board their aircraft. In other words, if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not flying out of the country.
This has been reaffirmed by Joyce recently when speaking with the BBC. In an interview, Joyce said that ”governments are going to insist” on proof of vaccination before being allowed to travel. And in the case that no legal requirement has been put in place, then he says airlines, like Qantas, ”have a duty of care to our passengers and to our crew, to say that everybody in that aircraft needs to be safe”’.
Alan Joyce is under the impression that most passengers would be okay with the new terms and conditions. “The vast majority of our customers think this is a great idea – 90% of people that we’ve surveyed think it should be a requirement for people to be vaccinated to travel internationally,” he said.
This, though, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to Australians since our own government has for a minute been suggesting that visitors from overseas would need to provide proof of vaccination before entering Australia. It seems fair that the same would be applied to us.
Nevertheless, Mr Joyce makes it clear that “once we open up our international borders, we’re going to have the virus circulating” which might be an uncomfortable reality for many Australians who have grown accustomed to zero-risk but that ”we manage risk in so many different other ways for other parts of life” that we should do the same for the virus.
Over to you, Australia.