Budget airlines Ryanair and easyJet have confirmed passengers must wear face masks on their flights over the summer and beyond.
Boris Johnson announced yesterday that face coverings will become voluntary from July 19 - dubbed 'Freedom Day' - everywhere in England apart from hospitals, GPs surgeries and care homes.
With Nicola Sturgeon yet to make a decision north of the border, the popular airlines confirmed masks will be kept onboard regardless of the destination or arrival airport.
The First Minister plans to move the whole country to Level 0 on July 19 and bin all "major remaining restrictions" three weeks later on August 9.
Sturgeon has previously hinted that face masks will remain in certain settings, such as buses, trains and shops, even when all legal measures are gone.
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The Mirror quotes a Ryanair spokeswoman as saying: “In order to protect the health of our passengers and crew, the use of face masks will still be mandatory across all Ryanair flights, regardless of the departing/destination country."
Passenger numbers rose significantly in June, with the easing of travel restrictions and successful rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination programme leading holidaymakers to Italy, Spain and Portugal.
EasyJet said in a statement: "At present there are no changes to easyJet's onboard mask policy and we will continue to keep this under review.
"We continue to be guided by our in-house medical adviser and a number of key industry governing bodies that airlines follow including the WHO (World Health Organisation), Icao (International Civil Aviation Organisation), Easa (European Union Aviation Safety Agency), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and public health authorities across Europe, and at present their guidance around the wearing of masks onboard remains unchanged."
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has previously suggested that he would stop wearing a face mask as soon as he was permitted to do so.
"I don’t particularly want to wear a mask. I don’t think a lot of people enjoy doing it," he added.
Last week it was reported that Ryanair has recently enjoyed a surge in bookings after a lean year.
Ryanair carried 5.3 million passengers on 38,000 flights last month - the same month it announced its biggest annual loss in 35 years of trading.
In June 2020, Ryanair flew only 400,000 passengers.
Passengers onboard one of the airline's planes are not kept away from each other with empty seats.
Instead Ryanair has introduced a number of measures to limit the potential spread of the coronavirus.
They include disinfecting the aircraft daily, the installation of air filtration systems and a ban on queuing for the toilet.
