News and notes from around the interweb:
- Orlando TSA a disaster.
MCO reports that only 10 of 19 TSA lanes were open this morning. – As of 19z 16 of the 19 lanes are open with the expectation of all 19 opening in about an hour. DL customers are still missing flights as the published wait times are in the 80 minute range.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) January 4, 2024
- Global Entry interviews at Philadelphia airport:
- Progress so far updating United Airlines domestic interiors which was announced in June 2021:
UA NEXT Configuration Modification progress:
319 13 complete, 4 in Mod, 16% Complete
320 6 complete, 2 in Mod, 6.6% Complete
738 10 complete, 4 in Mod, 5.6% Complete
739 1 Complete, 8 in Mod, 0.7% Complete
39M 49 Complete, 0 in Mod, 62% Complete— United Fleet Website (@UnitedFleetWebs) January 3, 2024
- Government’s evasion of judicial review of ‘No Fly List’ to be heard at Supreme Court on January 8
- Dumb consultant slogans don’t make money for loyalty programs
- Norse Atlantic won’t bring back Washington Dulles or Boston – London
- Is this better or worse than the folks who wear cloth masks, or those disposable 3 ply masks at this point? I get consistently wearing a properly fitted N95, and I get not wearing a mask. The stuff in between I do not understand. Yet that’s what I see in airports and on planes most often.
A guy sitting next to me on the plane has been wearing an N95 mask for about half the flight. The other half of the time, he takes it off.
The psychology of this behavior is interesting to me.
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) January 4, 2024
I don’t know which major US airport is truly the worst but Orlando’s airport is right up there. Considering the millions of tourists who come to Orlando every year, the airport is a disgrace. It feels like a mediocre suburban shopping mall last updated or renovated around 1997.
Securing a GE interview is a Kafkaesque, surreal experience. I live in Chicago where there is zero availability, ever. Had to drive to Detroit where they had slots a few weeks in advance. But in Las Vegas or International Falls, MN they can see you this very morning. It’s good to see PHL try something inventive to alleviate the backlog, but honestly, the whole GE apparatus is out of alignment with demand. Move the interviewers to where the applicants are.
Our TSA might be bad, but it’s not Atlanta.
The cabin refurbishment part of United NEXT was not going to happen anywhere the way UA said it – the supply chain is simply incapable of supporting what UA was trying to do on top of its massive fleet orders.
Of note, UA’s fleet growth for 2023 was dozens of aircraft short driven by delivery delays on the MAX.
UA execs in their last earnings call said that there would be little to no domestic growth in the first half of 2024 and transatlantic would not grow in 2024.
some of us knew better than to believe UA but others lapped it up….
This Orlando TSA story furnishes me with a great excuse for thinking that people who arrive at the last minute for a flight are just plain dumb. I’ve never been a situation where I would prefer to miss a flight and take another one. I usually book the first flight out in the morning, so my chances of delay are small. I arrive at the airport early, every flight, every time. I have comp lounge access, plenty of work to do and can go for a nice walk through the airport. Since there’s nothing anyone can do about airport delays, I’d rather take charge of my own self and set things up for success.
If the person has a cold or flu , I’m happy he wears a mask .
Having flown out of Orlando 75+ times the most I’ve ever waited with precheck has been maybe 15 minutes max. Yes, many tourist don’t have precheck and the regular line becomes a zoo looping past the food court in middle of the main terminal. MCO catches a lot of flack simply because it’s in Florida and constantly has delays secondary to weather with afternoon storms in the spring/summer/fall.
Many people ascribe to the magic bullet theory of masks which was pushed by the government. In it, you have to have a mask on all times to stop the magic bullet of a clump of viruses from entering your body and causing you to get sick. They fail to have a reasonable explanation for why taking your mask off to eat and drink doesn’t cause you to almost always to get sick. I was taught how to wear a special mask due to using a silica compound (which can cause silicosis) at my work. I was taught that exposure was the culprit and it seemed a likely situation with Covid-19. In most cases, short times without a mask for eating and drinking will not increase the exposure enough to increase the likelihood of getting Covid-19 a lot. Properly wearing a high quality mask should decrease the exposure, even if it is done only half of the time. Most people wear inferior masks and a lot of them wear them in a way that compromises the ability of the mask. They are wearing the mask as a fashion statement. I have personally found that I don’t get colds when I wear a mask around other people which is the reason I continue to wear N-95 masks correctly when I am in close quarters with others, such as when I am flying.
MCO is terrible. Waits for regular security are often over an hour an the Pre line is the most terribly run of any I have seen.
The other thing about MCO is that there is so incredibly little to do after security, very few restaurants or lounges, all overcrowded, that it incentivizes people to try to cut it close.
In regards to masks, I hate wearing them so I put them on only during boarding, deplaning, and walking to the toilets. In other words, when I’m exchanging air with a lot of folks. Anecdotally, I used to almost always get a cold after 6+ hr flights. Haven’t gotten it in years, since wearing masks as described.
Agree with others on the mask – it’s about cumulative exposure. It actually is demonstrably helpful even if one only wears it a portion of the time (its usefulness obviously tied to the fraction of time spent with it on).
This is true of all illnesses, but some more than others. COVID does require a decent amount of exposure, but considerably less than the flu, for example. Measles is basically impossible to not pick up; it not too different from the “magic clump” described above. Very glad we have vaccines to prevent that one!
Guess those who wait to the last minute to get to the airport were surprised
An 80-minute wait for non-TSA/Clear passengers at MCO isn’t a meltdown. It’s a standard day at MCO.
Masks: I was one of those who was a mask wearer during the pandemic. I was largely influenced by the number of folk who every day would wear masks in Hong Kong — I suspect due to the searing impressions SARS left there.
While I do not wear masks in public any more, having had COVID since, I do think they have a value in reducing the viral load you receive should you contract the disease from another. In my case, my wife. 🙁
I typically have a mask in my carry-on bag — of a particular type — which is useful if I am caught seated next to someone coughing their lungs up. BUT, I was wearing these masks on long flights (think US-SE Asia) way before the pandemic. They are charcoal-lined masks and they prevented me suffering bronchial and nasal effects of poor engine seals which could, and sometimes did, taint the cabin air. Aerotoxic syndrome is not a joke. Sometimes, Hell, you can smell the fumes on start up. I now have and use an AtmotubePRO to monitor VOCs in cabin air and can don my mask as necessary. I don’t care if folk think I am just frit of COVID.
BTW: The ONLY aircraft you can be 100% sure of not using engine bleed for cabin air the 787. It’s an option on the A350 but I don’t know a way to find out if the aircraft I am flying on is thusly optioned.
on masks.
GLOBAL ENTRY: I had been waiting for over a year for conditional approval to get an interview. So, I complained to my Congressman (US Rep).
Six weeks later, I was renewed, no interview.
US Govt employees HATE Congressional inquiries into their incompetence.
@ jsn55 hit the nail on the head. I was in and out of AMS, LHR, and other European airports during the Covid meltdowns all summer 2022 yet never missed a flight. Sure, Gold Track and similar programs help, as do *A Gold and OW Emerald, but arriving early and only having carry on luggage spared me days of missed, delayed, and cancelled flights. Those first in line are also often those first rebooked.
I shake my head whenever I see someone wearing a mask under their nose.
Maybe the people wearing cloth or surgical masks just don’t want to get the cold or flu or other diseases that are transmitted through droplets? Covid isnt the only thing that makes you sick. Or maybe that person has a cold and wants to lower the chance they transmit it to others?
There was an 8-year-old kid coughing for the whole flight in the row in front of me on a flight last week. I wish he would have been wearing a mask.
On the surgical vs N95 masks:
My husband has a large head with a wide face. As we discovered, most N95’s and KN95’s are too small for him, and if he tried to stretch the straps to fit, they would break. After a lot of research I finally found some of the hard cup N95’s that came in XL which did fit his face. But because they were so stiff, they abraded the skin on his face after only a few days of use. Masks that make your face bleed don’t exactly make you feel motivated to wear them.
But as it turns out, ASTM Level 3 masks fit across his face rather snugly, the straps don’t break, and they are comfortable on his ears. I’ve seen people wear N95’s and KN95’s with fits that are less snug than the way a surgical mask fits his face.
As I’m mildly immune-compromised, we would both prefer he had a respirator-style mask instead of a surgical mask. But something is better than nothing and he can actually wear these without the straps breaking or making his face bleed. (Perversely, I have a smaller face and head – I just lace cord-locks onto my N95’s which have the sturdier braided straps. That allows me to cinch them tighter, getting the fit I need.)
We just make sure that he is current with boosters, he uses Enovid in moderate- and high-risk environments, and we keep an eye on our air quality in our condo.
I renewed my Global Entry several months ago, well in advance of expiration. I got conditional approval fairly quickly and was offered a Zoom interview as an alternative to coming in person. I kept putting it off and after a couple months they’d simply approved.
No one lapped it up… but of course you are now Timmy. Give a pay on the back. Throw enough crap at the wall and some is bound to stick. #UnitedisnoDelta
No one lapped it up… but of course you are now Timmy. Give a pat on the back. Throw enough crap at the wall and some is bound to stick. #UnitedisnoDelta
It was NEVER possible for United to get hundreds of shipsets of IFE equipment and seats in one year. Their 10K from last year was for 139 new aircraft in 2023 and they missed that by several dozen thanks to Boeing.
They simply will take years to refurbish their IFE.
And I JUST saw a UA ad on TV today for UA’s “new” IFE.
Let’s not forget it took UA the better part of a decade to get Polaris on all of its widebodies. and it isn’t even class-leading any more.
I didn’t think most conditionally approved GE travelers scheduled interviews. Quite a few US international airports offer on-arrival walk-in interviews to people returning to the US, and, by definition, people needing GE travel internationally. I walked in, sat in a waiting area for about 10 minutes, got called, visited with some guy for about 3 minutes and was good to go for another five years. They do have working hours, but for many applicants it’s far superior to trying to book those non-existent appointments.