Mask-wearing will not be compulsory in the terminal of Canberra Airport from midnight on Friday.
The ACT Government has lifted the mandate after the advice from the main federal health officials changed.
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee decided "that it is no longer proportionate to mandate mask use in airport terminals".
It still advises mask-wearing in the terminal, though, and so does the ACT Government.
In recent months, mask-wearing in the terminal has been a source of friction between the airport's owners and the ACT government. The airport chief executive Stephen Byron said the mandate could have been lifted months ago.
"There's been no change to health situation or the vaccination situation from what it was eight to ten weeks ago," he told The Canberra Times.
If the ACT government hadn't lifted the mask rule, it faced imminent court action from the airport.
A top barrister had been engaged and papers made ready, with a court hearing pencilled in for later this week.
The airport's lawyers would have argued that insisting on a measure which health experts say is unnecessary, and which has been removed in other crowded areas of Canberra like nightclubs, broke the ACT's Human Rights Act.
The airport's argument was that it is only legal to infringe people's freedom through emergency measures if the government explains fully why the measures are necessary - which, the airport argues, the government hasn't done.
Masks were made mandatory at airports on January 8, 2021 after a national cabinet meeting. The aim was to slow the spread of the virus across state boundaries.
Canberra Airport was lumped in with Sydney and Melbourne even though its passenger numbers were a fraction of the big international airports'. Canberra has no direct international flights. Sydney Airport claims that 16.7 million passengers go through its international terminal a year - about 45,000 a day.
The ACT government said: "The use of face masks continues to play an important role in minimising the transmission of COVID-19 and influenza to protect the wider community, including those who are unable to get vaccinated and people who have a higher risk of developing severe illness.
"The ACT Government will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation locally and nationally. It will regularly review current low-level COVID-19 public health and social measures to ensure they remain proportionate to the health risks of COVID-19."
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