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Airlines, Uber, Lyft drop COVID-19 mask mandates

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss how travel and transportation providers responded to a federal judge ruling against the federal mask mandate.

Video Transcript

DAVE BRIGGS: While the mask mandate aboard airplanes and most public transportation across the country remains off, but it may not stay that way. You see, the Department of Justice says they will bring an appeal of the ruling by the federal judge if-- and that's a big if-- the CDC deems this rule necessary. The head of the flight attendants union, Sara Nelson, joined Yahoo Finance this morning. Here's a bit of what she had to say.

SARA NELSON: Everyone doesn't really know what to do because this was not rolled out in a way that you would normally shift a policy change, in a coordinated way through all of aviation. Aviation rules are set up for safety. The mask mandate was about safety and health, public health. And really, there should have been a-- a period over which there was a transition.

DAVE BRIGGS: It was very unusual, guys, in the way this was handled in that you had mid-flight pilots and flight attendants saying, take your masks off. Some applauded. Some were angry. Some were uncomfortable. We ordinarily do not see that. But now the CDC is in a very precarious spot because of the politics and the business that are intersecting here. All the airlines, you could see how quick they were to agree with this ruling. They all want the mask mandate lifted. They already told the president that.

So now you've got the CDC in the position where, Brad, maybe they have-- they feel the pressure to say, we don't need the mandate, because they know this is of utmost importance to President Biden as he goes in the midterms. If this reasserts itself as a political issue, it is really bad news. And imagine those flight attendants, who dealt with 4,200 cases of unruly passengers. If you put that mandate back on, you're going to have about 4,200 overnight. That'll be an ugly situation for all the airlines.

BRAD SMITH: You know, I think in all of this, with the decision that's going forward from the CDC, the decision from states, at the end of the day, what we still have to do at an individual level is figure out where for our families, for our households, but then with the cognizant mindset of the environments that we're entering into, what those risk factors are, how you do protect yourself, how you do protect the rest of your family, but at the same time, how you also are still entering into an environment where we are seeing a rising case count right now too.

So at the same time that we're seeing this lifted, or at least it being discussed in an accelerating fashion to be lifted, even there-- even though there is some pushback as to how that is rolled out, I think that is still where those discussions within households, within businesses, are going to take place and setting their own internal policies. We're still seeing that at the individual airport level as well.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And I think when you have this confusion in terms of how it was rolled out-- I mean, imagine being on a plane. Like, you're finally comfortable enough to fly with your mask on. And then just like that, they're like, masks off, everyone. You didn't even have an opportunity to say, oh, I'm not comfortable with this. So I do feel-- I do feel as Sara Nelson was saying in terms of perhaps the rollout and the transition. It should have been something that at least people would have time to adjust their travel plans if they wanted to. But at the end of the day, I mean, we are seeing some of these cases not leading to severe hospitalization.

BRAD SMITH: Mm-hmm.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: But obviously, COVID hasn't gone away yet. So perhaps it could have been handled better, and then we still have to wait for the appeal process to make its way through. So still a lot of gray area, but at least for now, the masks are off.

DAVE BRIGGS: And the FAA-- meanwhile, they said today that they are keeping in place the zero-tolerance policy. So if you do have an unruly passenger, they are going to have swift punishment. And probably that portion of that is waiting to see if it's put back on. But I can't imagine we are going back to where we were two days ago. That would be an unruly situation for all the airlines.

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