Mask Drama at Altitude: A ‘Yellowstone’ Actor’s Flight Fiasco [Roundup]

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About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. What? Refuse to sit next to a passenger wearing a mask? What next, refuse to sit next to a passenger that uses toilet paper after #2 or who doesn’t hog up overhead space?

  2. I’m gonna go pop some popcorn. I’m anticipating the anti-mask crowd to somehow defend this guy, despite it all being about him trying to stop the person wearing the mask from exercising their freedom to choose to wear a mask.

  3. If you’re more comfortable sitting at the gate when your plane takes off than sitting next to a masked passenger, I support your choice.

  4. I hate the sheeple that continue to wear masks but would sit next to one. Can’t say I wouldn’t make a smart a$$ comment or have a lot of thoughts about how pathetic they are.

  5. Had that personal escort crap happen in other 3rd world countries.

    Finally my daughter and I blocked access to agent and told the next guy coming up to get lost or we’d turn in the agent allowing it to happen. And stood our ground.

    He backed off and people behind us got the hint.

  6. Hey, Retired Gambler, heads up that the person to whom you are making that smart ass comment may be my immunocompromised son on his way to cancer treatment.

  7. I love the antivaxer movement. A great way to reduce our carbon footprint and take out the trash at the same time.
    Darwin was right and the earth is not flat.

  8. I don’t care if people wear masks or not. I did at the beginning of the pandemic, and don’t now. However, I find it funny that I seem to see so many elderly people (the group that has the best reason to be wearing them) on planes with their masks pulled down below their noses.

  9. I have not got colds and other respiratory ailments from flying on an airplane since the start of Covid-19 and that is why I continue to wear a mask when flying. I used to get such ailments when flying, especially on long flights. No word on if this actor acted different on another flight. Good job on removing someone trying to meddle with other people before the flight was in the air.

  10. @Arthur:
    Almost all the masks I see worn incorrectly are simple surgical masks. And if you’re using a surgical mask at this point you don’t understand the situation. They were designed to keep an infected person from exhaling infectious material (protecting the patient from the surgeon!), not to protect the wearer.

    Against the current versions you need a respirator to provide any decent protection–and respirator wearers are far more serious about getting it right–4 years in and only recently did I see a respirator worn wrong. (And for those who are going to trot out surveys showing masks don’t work–they don’t show respirators don’t work. And the biggest threat is people letting down their guard, anyway.)

  11. A drunk that’s rambling on about HIS personal choice thinks someone exercising THEIR personal choice is a problem, wow!…. as was pointed out he could very well be immunocompromised or about to visit someone that is. ….I guess all those Doctors walking around hospitals with masks on should forget what they learned in medical school and turn to B grade actors for advice according to the anti mask folks.
    Gawd there’s a lot of stupid out there…..

  12. Did it every occur to this idiot that the passenger may have been wearing a mask because THEY were ill and didn’t want to infect others?

    He’s a jerk with an inflated sense of his own importance.

  13. It’s amazing that four years in there’s still a small cadre of people who still haven’t figured it out.

  14. Nice compilation Gary. That’s why you’re The Blogfather. The part about crazy drunk dude from some show certainly seems to have attracted a lot of interest.

  15. @Gary – Maybe you could write about MaxMyPoint. It sounds interesting if a bit unintuitive.

  16. I love that the weakest minds along us choose to self identify by wearing masks and odd tinted hair.

  17. I am endlessly amused by so-called conservatives who feel it is their business to tell other people what personal decisions they should make, and get mad when they are told off. Freedom for me but not for thee.

    As for the “special” check-in lane, this is a clear market failure. If AA did a proper job of monetizing access to decent service, not only would they be profitable, but folks wouldn’t have to resort to this grey-market system.

  18. @Linda — I suspect few people wearing masks on airplanes are actually sick (I think the vast majority are simply scared people who are suffering the adverse long term consequences of having been previously lied to about mask efficacy). That said, though, if you’re right — and a mask wearer IS actually sick — isn’t that a very good reason not to want to sit next to them? I certainly prefer not to sit next to sick people on an airplane.

  19. My friend who has a heart transplant always wears a . When traveling or out in public.

  20. If you are still wearing a mask in 2024, but are not on your deathbed due to systemic health issues, then you are very, very dumb (even Fauci the Fraud acknowledged publicly that masks don’t work) or you are a virtue-signaling lunatic lefty who puts politics over science. Either way, just stop the nonsense.

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