From 1 Feb, the whole of the Lufthansa Group (including Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian will require masks as follows:
passengers will be required to wear either a surgical mask or an FFP2 mask or mask with the KN95/N95 standard during boarding, the flight and when leaving the aircraft. Everyday masks are then no longer permitted.
The requirement means that made at home, or masks other than these are not going to be acceptable when flying to or from Germany.
Exemptions, which LH are spelling out are quite limited – no more ‘I’m exempt’ stickers purchased from Amazon:
As before, an exemption from the obligation to wear a mouth-nose covering during the flight for medical reasons is only possible if the medical certificate is issued on a form provided by Lufthansa and a negative Covid 19 test is available that is not older than 48 hours at the scheduled start of the journey.
Will other airlines follow suit?
Too bad, one more airline to skip.
I bought a cheap cloth mask, cut out the back, so, it’s paper thin.
Allows me to breathe much better, and sleep on long haul flights, without breathing my own air.
If I can find a thinner one, I will buy it in a heartbeat.
One of the dumbest rules in history.
Not sure Dan understands the role of the mask since a thinner cotton will not filter out the micro particles from entering or leaving his nose/mouth. Though many cloth masks have an opening between the two cloth linings to insert a FFP2 filter (that’s what I use when in public spaces, indoor or out. The surgical mask is intended to reduce potential COVID particulates from leaving an infected person’s mouth/nose and reach a nearby person. The N/KN95 mask has the fine filtering that stops these micro particulates from entering the wearer’s nose/mouth.
The initial frenzy back in the early months of COVID led to campaigns to improvise home made cloth masks to try to minimize spread and not necessarily for protection. There was not enough PPE at the time for front line health care workers in most countries so that limited supply had to be rationed within the profession until more could be obtained and stockpiled. These homemade cloth masks would limit further competition for medically compliant masks until a surplus arrived and consumer purchases would not syphon them from the medical community.
But some cloth masks were design to be used with an insert FFP2 filter. Wonder if LH will recognize these as they’ve approved the actual filter.