How United Airlines Decided to Lead on Vaccine Mandates
In a Q&A, Scott Kirby, the carrier’s CEO, discusses how requiring Covid vaccinations for employees was clearly “the right thing to do.”
Vaccine mandates were a safety issue for United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Scott Kirby is the chief executive officer of United Airlines Holdings Inc., a role he assumed in early 2020, just a couple of months after Covid-19 began sweeping across the country. Kirby told the company’s 67,000 U.S. employees last summer that they would lose their jobs if they weren’t vaccinated by Sept. 27. About 99.7% of United’s workforce is now vaccinated. In a recent interview, Kirby and I discussed how and why he decided to make United the first U.S. airline — and one of the first large corporations — to impose a vaccine mandate. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Tim O’Brien: Just chronologically, walk me through your thought process about deciding to issue a mandate.