Mandating that domestic air passengers in the USA are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 is something that should be "seriously considered", Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has said. In a 27 December interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show, Fauci, who is also US president Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, said a domestic travel mandate would serve a different purpose to one already imposed on international arrivals. "You've got to ask yourself: 'Why it is you are making that requirement?'" he said. "If you're making a requirement for vaccination for people to get on planes who are coming into the country, that's understandable; you don't want to bring more cases into the country. But if you're talking about requiring vaccination to get on a plane domestically, that is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider." Fauci described a domestic travel vaccination mandate as something that would be "another incentive to get more people vaccinated". He declined to say whether he would be recommending such a mandate to the president "for the simple reason… that I don't want to be publicly telling what I'm recommending to the president, because then if the president doesn't do it, I don't want to make it look like he's going against it". He added: "The president takes all recommendations, all discussions and as a group we make a decision about what's best to do." Currently, with certain exceptions, passengers arriving from outside the USA need to be fully vaccinated with an accepted Covid-19 vaccine, provide a negative result of a Covid-19 viral test taken no more than one day before boarding a flight to the USA, and complete and sign an attestation that they are fully vaccinated and have fulfilled the testing requirement, according to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Following his MSNBC interview, Fauci was interviewed on CNN, according to a 27 December Politico report, where he clarified that "right now" he did not think "people should expect that we're going to have a requirement in domestic flights for people to be vaccinated". "When I was asked that question, I gave an honest answer," he said, referring to the same-day MSNBC interview. "It’s on the table, and we consider it. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. I doubt if we’re going to see something like that in the reasonably foreseeable future.” In October, US senator Dianne Feinstein introduced to the Senate a bill that would require all passengers on domestic airline flights to be fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative for Covid-19, or have fully recovered from Covid-19. At least one domestic airline, JetBlue, expressed concern about the operational complexity of implementing such a mandate. On 20 December, Feinstein and three other members of Congress authored a letter to CDC director Rochelle Walensky and Federal Aviation Administration administrator Steve Dickson urging them to implement a domestic travel vaccine mandate. "Travel at our nation’s airports has essentially returned to pre-pandemic levels but the risk from Covid-19, including from its new variant Omicron, continues to present a major public health threat," they wrote. "Requiring proof of vaccination or a negative test for domestic flights would improve public health and address concerns that passengers have about flying."

Ural Airlines has added a new Airbus А321neo aircraft to its fleet. The Russian carrier says the aircraft, with registration VP-BFO, arrived from the airframer’s facility in Hamburg, Germany, on 23 December. The aircraft, equipped with CFM International Leap-1A32 engines, is the sixth A321neo-NX and the ninth neo in Ural's fleet, the airline notes. The latest addition takes Ural's overall fleet to 52, comprising 14 А321, 24 А320, five А319, three А320neo and six А321neo aircraft.

Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) plans to resume flights to New York and Toronto in June. Toronto will be served twice-weekly from 1 June, while four weekly flights to New York are scheduled to begin a day later, Kiev-based UIA says. Boeing 777-200ER’s will be deployed on the routes.