Flight attendants 'over the moon' at lifting of mask mandate, OKC airport embraces change

Passengers and airline employees at Will Rogers World Airport were able to travel without masks for the first time in over a year after a ruling by a Florida judge struck down the national mandate Monday.

For the staff on many flights, the lifting of mask mandates is a welcome change. Sarah Zuniga, Fallon Carney and Madi Morris are all flight attendants living in Houston who met while working for Mesa Airlines. Two of the three now work with different airlines, but their employers have officially switched to "masks optional" policies following the ruling.

Zuniga, still employed with Mesa Airlines, said her first flight since the mandate was lifted will come on Thursday and she is looking forward to going back to work free from the added pressure of enforcing masking among passengers.

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"Every time I had to ask someone to wear their mask or wear it correct, I would have a bit of anxiety and worry about what would happen or how they would react," she said. "Thankfully, I only had to kick one person off of a flight because she did not comply. I was one of the lucky ones that did not have a physical altercation with a passenger about masks."

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For Carney, who was mid-flight Monday when the decision was made, it was an emotional moment. The pandemic had left her wondering if there would ever be a time when masks were no longer required.

"I almost cried tears of joy when I was able to announce to my passengers that they had the freedom to choose to wear a mask on our flight," Carney said. "People were clapping and smiling and the world aviation industry started to feel normal again."

Meanwhile Morris, who joined a different airline in January, but began her role at Mesa just before the pandemic began, was set to take to the skies Wednesday for the first time since the ruling.

"I truly am still over the moon about this and cannot wait to work my first flight in reality," she said.

Morris admits she understood people's frustration as someone who hated wearing a mask herself and often didn't when she wasn't working. However, for the staff aboard flights, there was more at stake when it came to following the rules.

"If we did not enforce people to wear their facemasks and someone in the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) were ghost riding on our flights, we as flight attendants could get fined, fired, or in big trouble with our airline," she said. "That’s what people did not understand."

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Morris said she watched passengers try a number of ways to get around the masking requirements, including eating lollipops while boarding as an excuse to remain maskless. People moving their mask for eating and drinking in-flight, she said, often made it seem like the masks were ineffective anyway.

"The moment that grown adults were forced to wear something over their face for a duration of a flight, aviation completely shifted and not in a good way," Morris said. "People were anxious and on edge and testing their limits. It became an underpaid babysitting gig."

Masks came off quickly for most at Will Rogers World Airport

Stacey Hamm, public information and marketing for Will Rogers, said as of Wednesday the airport had only received official notice from Southwest and American airlines that their mandates had been lifted for customers and employees.

"The employees at Delta and United and Allegiant and Frontier, they are not wearing their masks and it does not look like that they are requiring their passengers to," she said.

"For the most part people are embracing it. We do have a few individuals that I've noticed — we had a few TSA (Transportation Security Administration) agents that chose to wear a mask (on Tuesday)."

However, an AP-NORC poll of 1,085 adults conducted April 14-18 using a sample designed to be representative of the U.S. population found that a majority of Americans still support masks for those traveling on airplanes and public transit.

According to the poll, 56% support masking, while 24% are opposed to the practice and 20% neither support or oppose it. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

The mandate was first put in place on Feb. 1, 2021, and extended several times by the Biden administration as new variants of the COVID-19 virus surged across the country. Now the ruling of U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has the mandate on hold as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Justice Department look at the possibility of filing an appeal.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC passengers, airline employees grateful for lifting of mask mandate