JetBlue Airways
- JetBlue is ending its back-to-front boarding policy for travelers.
- Delta and United airlines will keep the back-to-front boarding as their primary boarding policy.
- The CDC still recommends limiting travel, even for those who have been vaccinated.
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JetBlue is ending its back-to-front boarding policy less than a year after implementing it at the onset of the pandemic, as more Americans are traveling and airfares are hitting record lows.
In an emailed statement to Insider, the company said, "We continue to work within public health guidelines and take clinical guidance from own medical experts to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep our customers and crewmembers safe in this next phase of our 'new normal.'"
JetBlue was one of only a few airlines to adopt the back-to-front boarding policy when the coronavirus first broke out last year. Delta and United airlines also implemented it, both of which are still keeping it as their primary boarding policy for the time being, according to the companies' websites.
Other airlines such as Southwest, American, Spirit, Sun Country, and Frontier are using group- or zone-boarding as their primary boarding policy for travelers.
JetBlue credits "mandatory face mask use and the hospital-grade air filtration on board every JetBlue aircraft" as being "the keys to greatly reducing the risk on board."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since February have required travelers to wear masks on any form of public transportation such as planes, buses, trains, and any other form of public transportation in the US. The guidelines also require air travelers to have "a negative COVID-19 test result or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 before they board a flight to the United States."
JetBlue said it remains "focused on keeping our crewmembers healthy through safety protocols and screening" as it resumes its group boarding process. The airline will continue to sanitized and disinfect commonly touched surfaces.
Since mid-February, the US has seen an increase in daily passenger numbers, according to TSA data, even as the CDC still recommends that people, including those who have been vaccinated, limit travel.
Many experts expect travel to pick up as more people get vaccinated. Kendra Thorne, owner of Royal Travel and Tours travel agency in Chicago, told NPR that "people are tired of being at home" and that she has noticed a "uptick" in people wanting to book vacations.
On Monday, the CDC released new guidelines for what fully vaccinated people are allowed to do. Those activities included being able to gather indoors, unmasked with other fully vaccinated people. These updated guidelines apply only to "fully vaccinated" people, meaning those who have waited about two weeks after the second doses of Pfizer's and Modera's shots, or two weeks after the single-dose shot from Johnson & Johnson.
Even if you are fully vaccinated the the CDC still recommends wearing a mask in any other setting that may involve unvaccinated people.