Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly says it is safe to fly again, “We’re doing everything possible to encourage people to come back and fly.”
I’m going to offer what I hope is a slightly more limited and nuanced take, that it is safe for some people to plan now to travel again during the months of June, July and August. This is speculative, but sums up my currently thinking about where we stand.
With airlines beginning to require passengers to wear face masks on board, we’re about to see a new conflict, because people are just as awful as they used to be. It’s just that there are fewer of them flying.
When American Airlines debated internally whether to require passengers to wear masks, or merely encourage them to (including by providing the masks), the argument that ultimately gave way to a mandate was that cabin crew would be in a position of having to enforce the new rules. And there are always going to be exceptions, which creates grey areas and opportunities for conflict.
When planes pull up to the gate passengers unbuckle their seat belts, not waiting for the captain to turn off the seat belt sign. Then everyone begins to jump up, and get into the aisle. Everyone crames body-to-body in the aisle. They’ve been cramped into airline seats for the duration of the flight, and strangely decide to cramp themselves even closer together in the aisle.
United Airlines has a new approach to deplaning that starts today, that they hope will bring social distancing to get off the plane that way that airlines are trying to implement for boarding and blocking of middle seats.
Ben Baldanza, who used to be CEO of Spirit Airlines, now has a podcast. He told a story about when he ran marketing for US Airways and a rental car company in Greensboro, North Carolina wanted to buy frequent flyer miles to reward their customers for throwaway ticketing on his airline.
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.
There’s no longer a single country that doesn’t have a restriction on arriving passengers of some kind. Countries that don’t have a major coronavirus problem don’t want one. When and how will restrictions lift? Like most of what we know about coronavirus, heterogeneity rules.
In mid-April it seemed like the best place to get coronavirus testing might be the Dubai airport. And since they were running tests right away, it might even be faster to fly there, get tested, and come home. However the plan there was only to deploy testing for passengers heading to destinations that required a negative test for entry.
Starting Monday testing is available to anyone who wants it at the Vienna airport at a cost of $210. And Vienna is much closer than Dubai.
We might pick up the new coronavirus from surfaces, though most transmission is thought to happen from respiratory droplets. Blocked middle seats does nothing to protect someone in an aisle seat from the person in the aisle beside them – or the passenger behind them.
Science though suggests one change could that reduce virus transmission on planes in half.
In March Hawaii started asking tourists not to visit the state. And then they got so serious about keeping outsiders away, who might bring a virus, that they started paying for plane tickets so tourists would leave.
Now the State of Hawaii – with fewer than 700 confirmed coronavirus cases and just 16 deaths – is making its success containing coronavirus part of a new tourism marketing campaign that’s in the works.
Warren Buffett owned about 10% each of Delta, Southwest Airlines, American and a little bit less of United. He wound up with a bit over 10% of Delta – his biggest airline position – by accident when he was buying as Delta was buying back shares. It was rumored a year ago he was going to acquire Southwest Airlines in its entirety.
Buffett has now unwinded them all and walked away from the industry.
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 »
