Airlines want to drop COVID-19 travel precautions. Is now the right time?

After one of the most turbulent periods in air travel history — loaded with new rules and regulations and plenty of unruly and disruptive passengers — airlines want to jettison COVID-era safety precautions for flights. 

The CEOs of the nation's leading airlines this week sent a letter to the White House urging the Biden administration to rescind pre-departure testing and vaccination requirements for international travelers and drop the federal mask mandate on flights, arguing that the measures are no longer necessary as coronavirus infections drop sharply across the U.S.

The precautions "are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment," they said in the letter.