No shows have been huge throughout the pandemic, which is odd, especially during challenging economic times you’d think people would cancel their trips to retain flight credit.
Interestingly one airline is doing something about no shows, by taking a detour to the past. For tickets booked before June 10, for travel July 1 – September 15, passengers have to contact Emirates to reconfirm their flight 21 days prior to departure.
The precautions they’re taking are significant. They’re limiting the number of people each team can bring into the ‘bubble’ although reportedly in addition to an athletic trainer, equipment manager, and security officer each player can bring their private masseuse or security.
Everyone is going to have to wear Disney Magic Bans that’ll be used to check in for coronavirus testing. Anyone who tests positive will go into isolation housing, before being re-tested (given the risk of a false positive), and not be able to leave until consecutive negative tests. Players will also be able to track proximity and duration of time spent near others, as well as their temperature and heart rate.
As airlines move away from inflight alcohol to save money, soft drink selection takes on greater importance.
For domestic flights and for international flights departing the U.S. there appear to be ‘supply chain issues’. Flight attendants have been told that while “[o]n June 1, we began transitioning from Sierra Mist to Sprite” individual flights now may have either one but not both. And Sprite Zero may be replaced with Sprite.
Air Canada Aeroplan is offerings a 50% rebate on redemptions of Canadian domestic flights and between the U.S. and Canada booked by July 1 for travel between July 1 and October 15, 2020.
Even though the ‘border closure’ has been extended, that actually doesn’t prevent Canadians from flying to the U.S. and of course restrictions on travel could be lifted come late July or beyond. You may think booking an award ticket to Canada now is speculative but that’s fine because Aeroplan rewards are cancellable free through August 31.
Florida reported that 260 out of 500 employees at Orlando International Airport (MCO) tested positive for the novel coronavirus. They did widespread testing at the airport as a result of a handful of cases there, followed up by contact tracing. The 52% positivity rate is huge, but – without more information about the specific roles involved – makes sense for indoor air conditioned environment.
We’ve had four days in the past week where the TSA reports more than half a million people clearing airport security checkpoints. That’s down from 2.3 to 2.7 million a year ago, but way up from 87,000 a day at bottom.
That’s mostly led by domestic leisure travel. Business travel, on the other hand, is a long way off – and likely won’t return to anything near normal this year. Here are 9 reasons why.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Just yesterday I reported that 3 of the world’s 5 largest airlines right now are in China as the country gets life back to normal and its aviation sector returns to something more like normal ahead of the rest of the world.
Now, though, flights to and from Beijing are being cancelled en masse on Wednesday – 1,255 flights, or 70% of the total scheduled for the day – as the government tries to contain a new COVID-19 outbreak.
There’s likely to be greater variance in what happens to fares than we’re used to, because airlines build their schedules guessing what demand patterns are going to look like and those may be more volatile than we’re used to – airline revenue management tools are more likely to “guess wrong” than in the past because they’re dealing with new situations they haven’t encountered before.
Hotels are a different story. While hotels can leave entire floors closed to save on cleaning and heating and air conditioning costs during periods of low demand, it’s harder to mothball capacity.
Last year at this time the four largest airlines in the world based on capacity were all in the U.S. American Airlines was the world’s largest airline, Delta second, followed by Southwest and then United.
The aviation industry has been among the hardest hit by COVID-19. That’s shaken up which airlines offer the most travel capacity in the world. Southwest is now the largest, and three Chinese airlines in the top 5.
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 »
