American Airlines will give employees who get a COVID-19 vaccine an extra day off work in 2022 and a voucher worth $50 that they can trade in for gift cards to restaurants and stores or merchandise.
Fort Worth-based American, which has been pushing for employees to be moved up on the priority list to receive vaccines, told employees in a letter Friday about the perks for those immunized against the disease that has devastated the airline industry.
“We still don’t know how quickly demand will return, but we know vaccines will be an important part of the recovery,” American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and President Robert Isom said in a letter to employees Friday. “That’s why we are fully engaged in the effort to make vaccinations available to our team as quickly and widely as possible.”
While President Joe Biden has said there should be enough vaccines for every American by the end of May, airlines have been walking a fine line between encouraging vaccinations and requiring them. In January, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said vaccines should be mandatory for employees, even though surveys show a large slice of Americans are still hesitant to receive the inoculations.
American Airlines lost $8.9 billion last year largely because of the impact of the virus, even though the industry has pushed a number of studies showing that traveling on an airplane is safe because of air filtering processes.
The airline started offering the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines to employees in Chicago this week, one of its major hubs. But getting the vaccines is dependent on priorities set up by individual states.
American got that batch of vaccines through the Chicago Department of Public Health, but the company hasn’t had any clarity on whether or not other states will give vaccines to airlines.
Getting employees vaccinated could further reassure passengers that the risks of getting COVID-19 while flying are minimal, in addition to protecting employees. American has had thousands of COVID-19 cases among its 100,000 employees, including several deaths.
The Arizona Republic reported this week about a Phoenix-based flight attendant who died of COVID-19 had continued working because “she needed the money.”
“We strongly encourage all team members to get vaccinated whenever you have the opportunity to do so, and our goal is to make that as easy as possible for you,” Parker and Isom wrote in the letter.
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