‘We are going to comply’: Spirit Airways CEO prepares employees for federal Covid vaccine mandate

Spirit Airlines‘ CEO Ted Christie on Friday instructed employees to get inoculated towards Covid-19 forward of forthcoming federal vaccine mandates for giant corporations.

President Joe Biden final month stated the federal government would require corporations with greater than 100 workers to mandate vaccines or common Covid testing for workers.

“The federal authorities has made it clear that Covid-19 vaccination or testing necessities might be mandated for corporations with greater than 100 workers, and we are going to adjust to that order,” Christie stated in an employees e mail, which was reviewed by CNBC.

Christie stated implementation of these guidelines will rely upon authorities steering “however we might be shifting ahead with new well being and security insurance policies, in any case.”

Spirit’s rivals American Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines are federal contractors, that are topic to stricter guidelines that do not present the identical testing choice. These airways instructed workers over the previous two weeks that they should be vaccinated to adjust to these contractor guidelines by Dec. 8.

A spokesman for the Miramar, Fla.-based airline confirmed the e-mail and stated the corporate anticipated to provide workers extra particulars within the subsequent few weeks. Final month, Spirit requested employees to share attestations of their vaccination standing to gauge what number of of them are inoculated. The low cost airline continues to be gathering these varieties.

The airline had greater than 8,700 workers as of the top of 2020 however has been within the processing of hiring pilots, flight attendants and others this 12 months.

New York-based JetBlue Airways instructed employees this week it has “explored whether or not there could also be an extension of time to conform however the federal authorities has indicated that it isn’t pushing again the date so we’d like Crewmembers to plan to be totally vaccinated by December 8.”