Qantas will require its frontline employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 within three months.
Qantas and Jetstar pilots, cabin crew and airport workers will have until November 15 to be fully jabbed.
The deadline for other employees, such as those in head office, to be fully jabbed is March 31 next year.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce had called on the federal government to mandate the jab for the aviation industry, but did not wait for it to move.
“Having a fully vaccinated workforce will safeguard all of our people against the virus and also protect our customers and the large amount of communities that we fly to,” Mr Joyce told reporters on Wednesday.
“We believe we have an obligation of duty of care for our customers and employees to make the workplace as safe as possible.”
Mandatory jabs were increasingly becoming a global standard and Mr Joyce expected more Australian companies to adopt it.
Qantas will grant exemptions for employees who provide documented medical proof as to why they cannot be vaccinated.
But this is expected to be a very rare occurrence.
A company survey which 12,000 staff responded to showed 89 per cent had already been jabbed or made an appointment.
Of those, 60 per cent were fully vaccinated, 77 per cent had received one dose and 12 per cent were booked in or planned to do so.
About three-quarters of people believed the jab should be mandatory and were concerned about working with unvaccinated employees.
Just four per cent of people were unwilling or unable get the jab, with seven per cent undecided or preferring not to say.
“If other employees decided that they’re not taking the jab, they are deciding, I think, that aviation isn’t the area for them,” Mr Joyce said.
“We will have limited redeployment opportunities given that the organisation has significantly shrunk in the last year or so because of COVID.”
Qantas is set to require international travellers to show proof of vaccination when people can again fly overseas.
No decision has been made about domestic passengers.
The airline is talking to its contractors interested in mandating jabs, but says it’s a decision for those organisations.
The federal government does not intend to mandate vaccinations, with exceptions for specific industries including aged care.
Instead, state and territory governments will ensure employers won’t be legally liable for any action an employee may bring under workplace health and safety rules over non-vaccination.
“We’re not running a mandatory vaccination program and it is also not reasonable that an employer may feel they have to put some sort of mandate in place to protect themselves potentially from some health and safety laws,” Mr Morrison said earlier this month.
Meanwhile, NSW, South Australia and New Zealand require aviation workers supporting international flights to be vaccinated.
Canned food producer SPC is mandating jabs for employees from the end of November.
Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank are rolling out in-house vaccine programs to frontline staff.
AAP
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