BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s Lufthansa will require the crew on its planes to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, the airline said on Wednesday.
Lufthansa will negotiate an agreement to this end with staff representatives, a spokesperson said, confirming an earlier report by Spiegel magazine.
“International flight operations will not be feasible in the future without coronavirus vaccination for aircraft crews,” the spokesperson said.
Lufthansa’s subsidiary Swiss will introduce the vaccination requirement from mid-November, as Swiss contracts already allow for that, while Lufthansa itself will have to first reach an agreement with staff representatives.
At its Austrian subsidiary Austrian Airlines, about nine out of 10 employees have already been vaccinated.
Earlier this month, United Airlines Inc required all its U.S.-based employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
A resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the United States has forced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reimpose some mask mandates and some companies to require vaccinations at workplaces.
(Reporting by Emma Thomasson, editing by Thomas Escritt)
