Delta Air Lines on Thursday said it will begin testing employees for COVID-19 and its antibodies, starting at its hub at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
The airline, which is the dominant carrier at MSP, is working with Mayo Clinic and Quest Diagnostics Inc. on the testing regime. The tests are part of a bigger effort to keep its people, planes and facilities free of the virus.
In a memo to employees Thursday, Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said the testing will begin at MSP next week, then roll out to Atlanta, where the company is based, Detroit and New York, cities where it also operates hubs.
Through May, the rate of COVID-19 infection among Delta's employees who deal with the public has been five times lower than the national average, he said.
Delta also has started an internal unit called the Global Cleanliness team, which will be responsible for new "standards and policies to ensure a consistently safe and sanitized customer and employee experience," Bastian said in the memo.
Such measures are also designed to encourage the flying public to return. But at the same time, Delta is taking steps that show it expects air travel to be diminished for some time to come.
This week, it offered incentive packages — including cash, health benefits, travel passes and career services — to encourage employees to leave the airline for good.
Delta, which employs about 9,000 people in the Twin Cities and a few hundred more elsewhere in the state, has not said precisely how many of its 90,000 employees it aims to trim with the incentives.