Claims that airlines are banning vaccinated people from flying have been shared hundreds of times on social media.
But that isn’t true. There is no evidence of any airline saying this.
Posts shared on Facebook and Instagram claim that airlines in Spain and Russia “are now warning vaccinated people not to fly” because of the “high risk of fatal blood clots during high altitude flights” which mean that Covid-vaccinated people “are in danger”.
The posts use a screenshot of a 2021 article headlined “Airlines Warning COVID-19 VACCINATED NOT TO FLY!”. The webpage claims “airlines in Spain and Russia are warning people who have been vaccinated should not travel” and that “COVID-19 vaccinated people can be excluded from air travel” and attributes this to “a Russian online news portal”.
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We fact checked a very similar claim in 2021. This also appeared to originate from an article on a Russian website, which said (translated by Google) that vaccinated people “may be banned from flying”. The article offered no evidence of this happening, or of any plans to introduce such a ban, saying only that it is possible, in the opinion of a doctor that the article quoted.
Our previous check also looked at a claim on a Spanish website which said (translated by Google) that “the world’s major airlines are debating whether to admit vaccinated customers”. It gave no evidence for this, and other fact checkers at the time were not able to find any. The International Air Transport Association told Reuters that it was not aware of any airlines considering this. And we’ve not seen any evidence that any airline has considered doing this since.
Although it is rare in healthy people, blood clots can form during long journeys (over four hours according to the NHS), including by plane. This is known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which is when a blood clot forms in a vein, usually in the leg.
A UK study into the vascular complications around a very rare type of blood clot involving low platelet levels after Covid vaccination is now underway. But this looks at a different condition to DVT.
We could find no evidence that any Covid vaccine raises the risk of DVT while flying.
We’ve fact checked many false and misleading claims about vaccines and Covid-19 more broadly.
