By Kyle Arnold
The union representing Southwest Airlines flight attendants says the company is refusing to enforce mask mandates with pilots, on and off airplanes.
Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents 15,400 flight attendants, said Friday that many of the carrier’s pilots are not only going maskless in the cockpit as allowed by Federal Aviation Administration rules but they’ve also dropped face coverings during on-ground training. The union said its members are still required to wear masks and are reprimanded if they don’t.
“As you are well aware, flight attendants have had to enforce this federal mask mandate, which has created issues in the cabin when customers refuse to comply,” said a letter to Southwest management from TWU Local 556 union leadership. “We have proudly handled the divisive issue of mask mandates in a professional manner, only to encounter a mask compliance situation with Southwest Airlines pilots.”
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association declined to comment.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said it has been requiring employees to wear face masks since May 2020. The company also said it has “full confidence in all of our leaders.”
“Since that time, Southwest’s Pilot and Flight Attendant Leadership Teams have sent multiple, jointly-authored reminders to Crews encouraging adherence to both Southwest’s and the TSA’s face mask requirement during this challenging time,” the company said in a statement.
The FAA has received 5,981 unruly passenger reports since the beginning of 2020, and 4,290 of those incidents were related to face masks. The FAA has fined dozens of passengers, and airlines have banned hundreds more over refusing to wear face masks, including several claims of assault against airline employees.
In June, the FAA fined a woman $21,000 for refusing to wear a face mask and punching a Southwest Airlines employee in the jaw while trying to board a flight in February.
The flight attendants union’s leadership passed a vote of no confidence about the company’s vice president of flight operations, Bob Waltz, who oversees the carrier’s 8,500 pilots, according to a letter sent to Dallas-based Southwest CEO Gary Kelly and incoming CEO Bob Jordan on Friday.
Waltz, they say, is responsible for the lax pilot enforcement.
“Discipline for infractions by flight attendants is harsher and much less forgiving for what is sometimes the exact same violation,” the union said. “What may be a proverbial slap on the wrist for a pilot is termination for a flight attendant.”
All passengers and crew members on a commercial aircraft are required to wear a face mask as well while they are in the airport. That rule handed down by the Biden administration in January 2020 expires on March 18 but it could be extended amid the uptick of COVID-19 cases from the surging omicron variant.
Southwest Airlines also has a policy requiring employees to wear face masks.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and airline rules give pilots the latitude to remove face masks if they feel the face coverings interfere with their ability to safely operate an airplane. However, pilot groups such as the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations have said pilots should wear face masks in other situations, including during simulator training, because the training does “not pose risks to the safety of flight.”
Flight attendants, meanwhile, are not only required to wear face masks but have to enforce face mask rules for passengers.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly told Congress last month that face masks “don’t add much” to protect against COVID-19 on airplanes because of the effectiveness of air filtration systems in the cabin. Kelly later clarified that he fully supports the federal mask mandate.
