Delta Air Lines ditches 'divisive' vaccine mandate for employees

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian announced Thursday on Fox Business that his company will not enforce a vaccine mandate for the airline's employees.

It was previously reported back on Aug. 25 that the airlines was slated to impose a surcharge on its unvaccinated employees due to the extra potential health risks for them. During an interview on Fox News show "Claman Countdown," the Delta Air Lines executive iterated that, without the necessity of a vaccine mandate, the company has already achieved a 90 percent rate of vaccination among its employees, and expected the numbers to top 95 percent within a month's time.

"The reason the mandate was put in by president, I believe, was because they wanted to make sure companies had a plan to get their employees vaccinated. A month before the president came out with the mandate, we had already announced our plan to get all of our people vaccinated. And the good news is the plan is working," Bastian said on-air.

"By the time we're done, we'll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate," he added.

"We're proving that you can work collaboratively with your people, trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs," Bastian stated.

Bastian went on to talk about how delays and cancellations of flights, which have plagued other airlines, haven't touched Delta, and that their operational statistics closely resemble those of 2019, saying: "Delta's done a great job all year long with making certain that we're managing supply and demand in equilibrium."