As Omicron Surges, Unions Oppose Airlines’ Effort To Cut Isolation Time For Vaxxed But Infected Workers

This story was updated Dec. 25th with with additional context and a comment from the Transport Workers Union.

Airlines and airline unions have largely worked together during the dramatic second year of the pandemic, but they have split over an industry effort to shorten isolation time for fully vaccinated airline employees — including crews, agents and others — who experience breakthrough infections.

On Thursday, industry trade group Airlines for America urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halve its recommended 10-day quarantine time for people with breakthrough cases of Covid-19.

Late Thursday, the Association of Flight Attendants said the 10-day recommendation should remain in place. On Friday, the Allied Pilots Association, which represents 14,000 pilots at American Airlines AAL , also said the 10-day recommendation should remain. Additionally, a Transport Workers Union leader tweeted his opposition to shorter isolation periods.

The split came just days after a Dec. 15 Senate Commerce Committee where airline executives, Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson, and senators celebrated their joint effort to enable a $54 billion aid package that nursed the industry throught the worst of the pandemic.

But a wide gap has emerged in the way that airlines and their labor unions view the concept of post-infection isolation time.

“As important as air travel is, you wouldn’t want to change something that is working,” APA spokesman Dennis Tajer said Friday. “At this critical time, we welcome the science. The science should not be covered with a blanket of commercial interest.”

Also on Friday, Gary Peterson, TWU airline division director, tweeted, “Once again airlines are looking at profits over their workers safety. My answer to A4A, and their partner airlines’ latest request for the CDC to diminish worker COVID recovery time, as the Omicron variant and positive COVID cases surge, is ‘Hell No!’

TWU represents about 65,000 airline employees including 30,000 American employees jointly represented with the International Association of Machinists.

In a letter sent Thursday to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, Sara Nelson wrote that decisions on suitable isolation time “should be based on science, not staffing, and they should be made by public health professionals, not airlines.

“The vast majority of crewmembers are vaccinated at this point, but may not have received a booster. If a fully vaccinated crewmember tests positive – whether for the Omicron, Delta, or another strain – we support your agency’s current recommendation to isolate for 10 days2 for several reasons,” she said.

AFA represents 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines.

Nelson referred specifically in her letter to an earlier request by Delta Air Lines to shorten the immunization time: that request, made Tuesday, was subsequently adoapted by A4A.

In the letter, Nelson noted that “the current climate in the passenger cabin is highly stressed,” with a record number of passenger incidents fueled by alcohol and refusal to comply with onboard mask rules. “Staffing flights with crewmembers who may still be symptomatic, infectious, or both by shortening them on necessary isolation time will only make this situation worse,” she said.

In his letter to the CDC, A4A President Nick Calio, noted, “As with healthcare, police, fire and public transportation workforces, the Omicron surge may exacerbate personnel shortages and create significant disruptions to our workforce and operations.”