Canada Now Requires Masks When Traveling By Air

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: April 18, 2020

31 comments

You can now add Canada to the list of countries requiring passengers to travel with face masks.

Canada’s Minister of Transport has announced some new travel restrictions that kick in as of 12PM EDT on Monday, April 20, 2020. Essentially this requires all air passengers to have a non-medical mask or face covering (to cover their nose and mouth) during travel. Passengers need to bring their own protective gear, or else they won’t be allowed to travel.

With these new restrictions:

At Canadian airport security checkpoints, passengers will be asked to wear a mask, since screeners can’t always keep two meters of separation between themselves and travelers
Passengers on all flights departing or arriving at Canadian airports will be required to demonstrate that they have a non-medical mask or face covering during the boarding process, or else they won’t be allowed to continue on their journey
Passengers will be asked to wear a mask or face covering when they can’t physically distance from others, so presumably this includes when you’re on a full flight

Passengers may need to wear masks on full flights

As the Minister of Transport explains, wearing a non-medical mask or face covering over the mouth and nose is another way to prevent your respiratory droplets from contaminating others or landing on surfaces, which is why this policy is being implemented.

Masks will be needed at Canadian security checkpoints

Bottom line

Canada is now requiring airline passengers to travel with face masks. They only consistently need to be worn at security, while onboard planes they need to be worn when social distancing isn’t possible.

I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering what the future of air travel will look like, and whether wearing masks may just eventually become a standard part of the flying experience.

What do you make of the requirement to wear masks — would you like to see a policy like this expanded?

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Azamaraal Diamond

April 20, 2020, 5:45 pm

Actually closing the border early in the game and instituting tight controls is what worked.

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TJ of Alex New Member

April 20, 2020, 2:17 pm

Flew China Airlines TPE-NRT on 24Mar20..350-900 Airbus...18 pax..All pax required to be wearing masks to board..dont know if it was a government requirement or airline requirement(which is government owned)...Mask work...look at the population of Taiwan and the number that are infected..been wearing masks for years because of the pollution blowing across the Taiwan straits from China..

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jk Guest

April 19, 2020, 12:32 pm

@ james What makes you think i treat China/Taiwan/Japan as the same country? I merely said that countries in Asia, in general, have good measures established, yes there might be exceptions. It seems like you have a heart of glass, were you paid 50 cents to write that? Or is it 70 cents now?

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David S New Member

April 19, 2020, 8:35 am

We came back from Thailand in early Feb. Thailand was great and safe. You could buy masks, everywhere you went had a sanitiser and/or temperature sensors and the airports and flights were safe and had strong checks in place. Got back to London and they were patting themselves on the back for putting a few posters up. No testing or checks whatsoever. The UK is an island and I hate to think how many of the initially infected passed through LHR without any check at all. Hope we impose some form of testing if/when things start recovering. Not when you land, but before you get on an international flight. When you land, it’s too late

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Anton Guest

April 19, 2020, 5:43 am

I think every airline should adopt it in given circumstances. You should watch Chris Martenson video masks why wearing even simple mask is important. To summarize, it mainly to reduce transmission from asymptomatic carriers (there are significantly fewer particles coming out of your mouth even with most simple mask), to remind us not to touch our face, especially after touching contaminated surfaces on the place and even if it does not fully protect you from getting infected it can reduce viral dose that you get and it will result in less severe illness. Many countries in Asia figured it out long time ago when there was SARS. I recently took a flight from BKK to AMS and almost everyone on the plane was wearing mask for the duration of the flight as well as all flight attendants. The service was also reduced to bare minimum to reduce interaction with flight crew and we were asked not to approach flight attendants with questions except in an emergency. I am totally fine with these measures and with reduction of service until the pandemic is over. Coming back from Thailand I was shocked that airport personal in Europe did not have masks nor hand saniterzers at security check points.

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