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All unvaccinated passengers will be banned from flying internationally on Qantas (ASX: QAN) planes once overseas travel resumes according to the company’s CEO Alan Joyce.
The airline will mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for all passengers flying overseas as the airline gears up to relaunch its international routes by Christmas.
It comes after Qantas announced in August it would require all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by 31 March 2022, with frontline employees to be fully vaccinated by 15 November this year.
Joyce’s comments were made at the Trans-Tasman Business Circle on Tuesday.
“Qantas will have a policy that internationally we’ll only be carrying vaccinated passengers,” Joyce said.
“Because we think that’s going to be one of the requirements to show that you’re flying safe and getting into those countries. We’re hoping that can happen by Christmas.”
The banning of unvaccinated flyers was first flagged by Joyce to ABC Radio in July 2020.
“Internationally we absolutely will [mandate vaccines] and that’s becoming a standard around the world,” he told ABC radio at the time.
The move comes in tandem with the New South Wales post-lockdown roadmap, which details how fully vaccinated people will have more freedoms than the unvaccinated in the state.
The roadmap says stay-at-home orders for adults who have received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be lifted from the Monday after NSW passes the 70 per cent double vaccination target.
While no date has been given for when that freedom day will be reached, the state is anticipating it will be around the 25th of October 2021.
The State's Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the new post-lockdown restrictions will be policed by incorporating a vaccine passport into the state's QR check-in system.
Updated at 9.41am AEST on 10 September 2021.
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