Following the travel mask mandate being struck down by a federal judge in Florida, airports across the nation are beginning to take down signs and adage that have been up for two years.
At the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the process will take longer than just a couple of hours, as Jeff Lea says it will be days.
“We are beginning that process to pull down a lot of those health safety messages that are related to the pandemic that were related to this mask regulation, so that will take some time given how large and how much space we have and all the signage,” Lea said, noting that it will take a few days.
Lea is the spokesperson for the Metropolitan Airports Commission at MSP Airport, and he joined News Talk 830 WCCO’s Vineeta Sawkar to share what’s happening already.
“There was a lot happening yesterday,” Lea said.
Lea explained that the airport began reaching out to its federal partners and agencies that it had been working with for the past 24 months about masking regulations and what the next steps will look like.
“It took a little while into the evening to get that confirmation, that direct line of communication, that the regulations would not be enforced, and then we shared that we would change our regulations here at [MSP],” Lea explained.
When it comes to what is going on at the airport and if people are still wearing their masks, Lea stressed that it’s important to remember, “masks are still optional.”
“We still have a segment of travelers and visitors and employees that I think are going to feel much safer continuing to wear masks,” Lea said, pointing out that in Terminal 1, more than 50% of passengers appeared not to be wearing masks this morning.
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Lea thinks that as time goes on, the number of people deciding whether or not to wear masks while at the airport will change, but right now, it may be too sudden for some.
While it seems that wearing masks and rules around masks at airports have started to slip over the past couple of months, with mask mandates around the nation being rolled back, Lea shared that no longer having to enforce the mandate will be something different.
“There were certainly times when we had passengers and travelers and visitors that may not have been compliant and that, not only here at MSP but at other airports, caused some tensions,” Lea said. “But obviously, that is now going away. But it’s still important to remember that there is a segment that would have liked this mask mandate to continue for their own health and safety concern.”
When it comes to what travelers should expect, Lea said that the main thing is that masks are now optional, and the TSA will no longer enforce the mandate.
Beyond that, travel is exactly going back to how it was before the start of the pandemic, and Lea knows that.
“We have a changing dynamic here for travel going forward,” Lea said.
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