A number of major airlines, including Ryanair, easyJet and British Airways, will continue to force passengers to wear face masks on their planes after “Freedom Day”. They will join businesses in other sectors which have decided to refuse custom from people who don’t follow Government “advice” after July 19th. ITV News has the story.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday that face coverings will no longer be a legal requirement in the fourth and final stage to ease England’s lockdown…
Despite the Government’s decision, Ryanair has said it will continue to make face masks mandatory on flights.
The airline said in a statement: “In order to protect the health of our customers and crew, the use of face masks will still be mandatory across all Ryanair flights, regardless of the departing/destination country.”
Asked about its plans from July 19th, easyJet also said it currently has no plans to drop its requirement for passengers to wear face masks.
It said: “At present, there are no changes to easyJet’s onboard mask policy and we will continue to keep this under review.
“We continue to be guided by our inhouse medical adviser and a number of key industry governing bodies that airlines follow including the World Health Organisation, International Civil Aviation Organisation, E.U. Aviation Safety Agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and public health authorities across Europe, and at present their guidance around the wearing of masks onboard remains unchanged.”
Meanwhile, train industry body the Rail Delivery Group said “wearing a mask helps protect others”, but said that the relaxation of the rules around their use indoors would apply to trains.
It has however have pledged to “support” passengers who continue wearing face coverings if they become voluntary.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: “If people don’t object to this now, their grandchildren will be wearing masks in the 2050s, although nobody will remember why,” says Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens.
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I have just received an email asking me to sign a petition to “Keep Legal requirement to wear face coverings in shops and supermarkets after July19th”! WTF.
Well that will be good news for the beleaguered airline industry, along with all the leisure sector, all in apparently deep shite, wanting to start generating revenue fast else they will go bust, so they decide to bring in face-knicker apartheid. That’ll do it!
Mind you, it could actually be a Eureka moment, if you believe the polls (I don’t) the vast majority of the new variant hidey Human being (Homo Bovinus) is in favour of keeping their face-knickers on for the foreseeable future. Independent thinkers like sceptics are very much in the minority. This might be very astute business thinking by Ryan air et al, catering to the majority punter and not giving a toss about free thinkers.
Re. the Peter Hitchens’ Comment: Is he the same Peter Hitchens who accepted the jab for the sake of an easy life?
When I flew BA last November I told them I was exempt from wearing a mask and there were no problems at all.In fact they helped by issuing me a lanyard, as they said this would stop me being questioned all the time. One steward asked if there was anything she could do to help. I told her my only requirement was to be able to breathe freely. The trouble is the Establishment management is out of touch with the average employee.
I have just been in hospital and it is largely the top people that want you to wear a mask. The poor NHS employees, who have to wear these stupid masks all the time, are forced to cooperate. A lot of them are anti mask and many of them don’t wear them properly, not that I mind that.
Get the Jab
Pay the tab
Sorry Mr Hitchens- you bought into this
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I have been on many planes since this crappy mandate came in. I don’t suffer from any sort of respiratory problem but I do find that wearing this things cause me to have laboured breathing.
Unfortunately i have no option but to comply as my home country does not have any ‘mask exemption’ policies. Also i have to get from a-b.
It will be interesting to see what happens when I fly at the end of the month!!!
Presumably you’ll have to mask up in the airports too- so you’re potentially looking at 7-8 hours, possibly longer wearing something that you know isn’t good for you. In most cases just to get a break in the sun. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that someone, somewhere doesn’t want us filthy peasants flying at all…
Read the terms and conditions of the booking, if the airlines have any sense, there will be medical exemption in there which will be your way around this madness.
The airlines would never insist that anyone has their breathing restricted, they would get sued. The medical exemption will protect them against this.
Anyway, even if you did wear a mask on a plane, you would still be allowed to take it off to eat and drink which makes the whole thing pointless.
Once the aircraft is pressurised, take it off claiming breathing difficulties in the reduced pressure cabin. Feign passing out…
Im just waiting for the first loss of cabin pressure incident where 200 panicking masked up people try to forcefully pull on an oxygen mask, forget to remove their masks, fail to get a seal and end up passing out or suffocating.
A normally innocuous in-flight issue turning rapidly nasty.
Sadly, I think I have taken my last ever flight.
I renewed my passport in February 2020 … terrible timing. The UK govt defrauded me of >£70.
But at least you got a proper British passport.(I hope)
This outsourcing of discriminatory activity to businesses is plain wrong, illegitimate and, in a functioning democracy, illegal.
Unfortunately, only Ron DeSantis gets that and fights against it.
All other politicians dance to the fascist oligarchs tune here.
But besides, this is not as straightforward as they currently seem to make it (up) for them:
Do the old exemption rules apply?
If not, are there new ones?
If a business demands masks but the law or guidance doesn’t, it will surely also have a set of new, different liabilities in that regard.
First, the exemptions, as above.
Then, the safety assessments- they cannot rely on the excuse that the government told them to enforce this, if someone gets a heart attack due to that suffocating masking, they are on the hook.
I am sure that there is plenty of other legal stuff to consider here and that as such, they are best advised to stick to government policy and ditch any mask mandate from 19.7. as well.
So they are keeping masks, however they’ll scrap the ‘social distancing’ rules straight away and pack people in like sardines again. I’ll be eating and drinking very slowly, what are they going to do, throw you off the plane mid-flight?
I fully expect business and first class passengers to be exempted soon and first.
I’d assumed I was never going to be able to fly again anyway. Not before The Revolution anyhow.
Yet they’re not updating their advice to warn against flying after being jabbed. Surely there’s huge legal ramifications for them if someone dies of a blood clot when they know the dangers are there and haven’t warned anyone? Particularly sinister is when destination countries require the double-jab as entry requirements…
Nothing to see here. Just another of those incredibly rare coincidences that this shitshow is full of.
Work meeting today “we should encourage people to wear masks as an act of kindness”. I have said we should not do so, for legitimate harmful reasons. It’s ridiculous, pathetic and scummy in equal measure. I am sick to my back teeth of it all. Then on top it’s a case of “update all the risk assessments”. How and what for ? The risk assessment the HSE put out is about controlling the transmission of Covid. It is not legitimate in H&S principles as the Risk Assessment must be about the significance of harm, not the significance of transmission. I don’t think I can honestly keep swimming against such a tide of stupid.
It’s exhausting isn’t it?
‘Then on top it’s a case of “update all the risk assessments”. How and what for?‘
Because that is what ‘managers’ do. They must be seen to be doing something, however pointless or ultimately disadvantageous, simply to remain ‘in post’.
This will stay for a looooong time.
Forever. As has been mentioned, in years to come people will not know why they are wearing them, but wear them they will.
I hope the whole lot of them go bankrupt.
We need a high profile name-and-shame website for all businesses that enforce this idiocy.
If a point isn’t made now they’ll NEVER remove the rule.
Fuming because im booked on Easyjet the week after the 19th. Although id still rather walk than fly BA for any journey at all.
Name and shame all you want, but harcore sceptics like us who object strongly on principle to masks are in a small minority. I doubt many people care much what we think.
The feeling is mutual.
Just exempt yourself and ignore them ?
That doesn’t work for non-legal policy of private premises or businesses (ie airlines).
They can admit who they do/dont want for any reason.
I’m not sure about this. I don’t think they can refuse admission if that violates the Disability Discrimination Act. A person claiming mask exemption at present does so under the terms of that act (I personally claim exemption because mask wearing causes me psychological distress). Unless the law on this is changed I think one or two test cases will cause businesses to change their minds.
Just to qualify, they will keep masks compulsory on flights…..except when you’re eating and drinking….centimetres away from somebody next to you.
Personally I would have awarded Covi the George Cross, as it’s so polite it takes a dinner break at the same time as all of us humans. That’s definitely on the considerate side of the spectrum for a deadly virus.
And it keeps a low profile.Never rises above the level of the dining table to attack passing zombies.
I think this is all about insurance now. The provision of public liability insurance now probably depends on business premises being “Covid safe”! However, I can’t imagine there is a clause in any policy about being “flu safe” even though you’re 5 times more likely to die of it than Covid!
If somebody died of the flu a short period after coming off a flight, then they probably wouldn’t try to sue the airline. Not so with Covid though… Go figure!
It’s time to push back everywhere. Identify the harms from masks from the WHO guidance, send it and ask them how they are keeping you safe by subjecting you to known harms.
Minor point, but I recommend you don’t follow the link to ITV News. That piss-taking website forces cookies on you and there’s no facility to opt out. In fact, I think their approach is illegal.
“Cookie AutoDelete” plugin is your friend, you can only allow what YOU decide.
for all Chrome-like browsers (incl. Chromium, Brave, Vivaldi)
Thanks. I’ll look at it. Hopefully it can be used on Opera.
In a tin can in the air with extremely limited air filtration systems, everybody would have to be in a spacesuit to prevent the viral load in the cabin from getting past the critical threshold. A leaky cloth isn’t going to slow anything down.
It is the most pointless waste of time, and the most extreme version of value signalling imaginable.
Quite literally lunacy.
It’s actually the opposite! There’s no shortage of fresh air on a plane because it comes from the engine intake. It’s approx 70% continually fresh and 30% recycled so that people don’t dry out too much – but even the filtered stuff is very pure.
But the random way masks are worn and handled would make the whole exercise pointless even if they actually worked- they must know this, and yet they persist with the virtue signalling. Not for me, I have better things to do with my time.
You are both right. The ‘masks’ used by the general public are rubbish and mostly non-compliant with any standards for ‘medical masks’, and most do not know how to use them properly, so they are worse than useless, and once the engines on planes are running, it’s pretty good quality. When recycling is in use, it’s possible to treat it by ultra violet C to annihilate unwanted contaminants; don’t know if planes have that or not, though,
I used to be international cabin crew so I dread to think how many viruses and bacteria I would’ve been exposed to! Only had one bad cold/flu in years and prob caught that at home.
Biggest health risk was definitely malaria, since it’s not possible to take a prophylactic permanently so the only way of avoiding it was avoiding getting bitten. Couple of colleagues caught it.
People are worried about the wrong stuff!
Well if they can sell all their seats to the sheeple then they will be vindicated.
And it will leave a gap in the market for an airline that is less twatty.
“Gap in the market” In theory maybe. In practice the barriers to entry are too high and a handful of sceptics are not worth the candle.
So Govt leaves the door open for private businesses to do their dirty work for them and lo and behold, it’s like masks are no longer a personal choice.
I won’t be wearing a muzzle and any die hard mask fanatic companies will not get my business. I think those like me will be in the minority but I feel the last 12 months has prepared me for living without forgeign holidays and the like.
Meh.
I agree with your attitude, and have never used them at all. No trader is immune to the discrimination act etc, whatever the usual suspects say. If you declare that you are exempt, they cannot override it, or they can expect a letter from your solicitor.
You’re allowed to remove masks to eat and drink. Box clever and prolong the pleasure of eating on a plane.
Similar tactics worked over substantial meals. Leave a lettuce leaf on your plate with your fork cocked and the fascist inspector can’t touch you if you order one for the road..
Last several flights ive been on this and last everyone gets really good at making a packet of crisps and a coffee last 4 hours.
I’ll be doing exactly that this weekend as i suspect will 80% of other people on the flight.
The problem is that their air conditioning systems don’t filter out the Sars virus cos it’s too small. If masks worked they could just put an old sock or two over the inlet and outlet and bingo! Problem solved.
But as it is they have to pretend that they believe that wearing masks will fix the unfixable air filtering problems.
You are both right. The ‘masks’ used by the general public are rubbish and mostly non-compliant with any standards for ‘medical masks’, and most do not know how to use them properly, so they are worse than useless, and once the engines on planes are running, it’s pretty good quality. When recycling is in use, it’s possible to treat it by ultra violet C to annihilate unwanted contaminants; don’t know if planes have that or not, though, E.g. https://www.amca.org/educate/articles-and-technical-papers/amca-inmotion-articles/uv-c-for-hvac-air-and-surface-disinfection-2.html
Ah, Ryanair “the world sleaziest airline and proudly so”, and British Airways “We lose your bags with candour” and Easyjet “we are as shit as the others”
what a lovely bunch
Landmark Danish study finds no significant effect for facemask wearers
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/do-masks-stop-the-spread-of-covid-19-
You are peeing in the wind with this one, I’m afraid. We have all tried to use it when making our cases but it may as well not exist. The Covid Cultists simply do not want to know.