(CNN) – The use of a mask will soon be mandatory for interstate travelers in the United States, according to an executive order signed by President Joe Biden on Thursday.
The order is a directive for several agencies to take steps to require masks to be used in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
At this point, it is not clear exactly how the requirement will be met. The Department of Transportation has forwarded questions about how the request will be implemented to the White House.
Good news for the flight attendants union
The switch to mandatory masks was immediately celebrated by a union of flight attendants.
“What a difference the leadership makes! We welcome President Biden’s national approach to ending the virus and getting us out of this pandemic,” said Sara Nelson, international president of the CWA Flight Attendants Association, in a statement.
Nelson said the mandate would provide “the necessary support” for flight attendants and other aviation workers on the “front lines”.
Airlines say they have kept their promises to stop passengers who do not keep their commitments on future flights. The Airlines for America industry group says its members have banned thousands of passengers.
Delta Air Lines said recently that it restricted 880 passengers because of a breach of the mask.
FAA takes more rigid approach
Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a stricter approach to dealing with unruly passengers.
Passengers who assault, threaten, intimidate or interfere with airline crew members can face fines of up to $ 35,000 and even imprisonment, according to the FAA.
In December, the FAA proposed fines of $ 15,000 and $ 7,500 for two passengers “for allegedly interfering and assaulting flight attendants who instructed them to wear face covers.”
The flight attendants union, AFA, first asked for an aircraft mask mandate in April 2020 in a letter to then Transport Secretary Elaine Chao and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.
The Trump administration resisted calls from industry and workers to develop a mask requirement. Chao said he believed the issue could be better addressed by companies and their employee unions.
“When the federal government gets involved, we tend to be much tougher, we tend to be inflexible and, once we implement a rule, it takes a long time to remove that rule if conditions change,” she said last summer.
Airlines for America, which represents the main air carriers in the United States, wrote in a letter to Biden earlier this month that, since airlines currently have policies that require masks and prohibit defaulting passengers, it believes that an action by Biden would be “a consequent setback from law enforcement”.
The group said it supports a temporary requirement applicable to all passengers aged 2 years and older, which lasts “only during the pandemic”. It said that crew members should be covered by a separate set of guidelines.
In addition to the mask’s mandate, Biden also ordered on Thursday that all travelers, including U.S. citizens, be required to provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test before entering the United States from abroad. The request underscores the CDC policy announced last week.
CNN Pete Muntean, Harmeet Kaur and Natalia V. Osipova contributed to this report.