US Senate Passes Resolution To End Airline Mask Mandate

The United States Senate passed a resolution on Tuesday to end the public transport mask mandate, Senators voted and the resolution passed 57 votes to 40, Republican Senator Rand Paul introduced the resolution.

The federal mask mandate which requires a mask to be worn on public transportation was set to expire on March 18, however, President Biden extended the mandate until April 18 on the recommendation of the CDC. Despite the Senates win the resolution is unlikely to pass in the Democrat majority House. President Biden himself is opposed to this and the White House has confirmed that he would veto the resolution, though this resolution does signify that there are many people who think it’s time to end the mandate.

Airline trade group Airlines for America which had strongly supported the mask mandate has recently begun lobbying lawmakers to start relaxing the rules, many countries including those that have been more strict COVID restrictions wise such as the UK have started to do away with these requirements.

Airlines, flight attendants and airports are also ready for this mandate to end, while most passengers do comply with the mandate some don’t and it is the flight attendants that have to enforce the rule. Since the beginning of the mandate there has been a surge of unruly passenger behavior reports, the FAA on March 7 reported 814 incidents, of those, 535 were related to face masks.

Senator Rand Paul has been opposed to the mandate for a long time, and suggests that as vaccination levels rise in the US and COVID cases fall it is not required, agencies such as the TSA and the CDC have both said that they are working to examine the mandate and come up with a revision to it.