In India hotels have pivoted to deliver meals and are making commitments about the quality and lavishness of what you’ll receive. India has one of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks. In the U.S. we do food delivery and contactless pickup from great restaurants. In India the great restaurants are actually in hotels.
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.
U.S. airlines now require that passengers wear masks in order to fly. They’ve been lobbying the federal government to require it, but it seems like compliance on planes is actually better than average compared to many states where it’s a legal requirement.
Passengers who have medical reasons not to wear a mask are exempt from the requirement. Delta is going a step farther than other airlines (as they often do, for better and worse) requiring passengers who want to claim a medical exemption to have a medical consult prior to travel. If you’re faking, you get your money back.
Two groups of passengers began egging each other on after American Airlines flight AA2333 from Miami to Philadelphia early in the week, culminating in a brawl at baggage claim.
Usually passengers use the lavatory. Far less common is when passengers just stay at their seats although those are the stories that go most viral especially when they’ve only just met on board.
I don’t know the story of these two passengers, but you can see that even though love hit them at least one is still wearing a mask.
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.
I’ve been told by more than one person that in an internal call United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told managers that American Airlines is dumping capacity at low fares, and he says that United won’t follow.
United is selling some cheap tickets, but nothing like what I’m seeing from American right now – like $49 roundtrips on major routes.
Sabre is being used by the FBI to track suspects. Put another way, your digital travel footprints are an open book for law enforcement.
The crazy thing? The government doesn’t actually have explicit authority to do this, and so relies on the 1789 All Writs Act.
In previous challenging times airlines cut back on their cleaning, going as long as 18 months between deep cleans. Now despite losing billions of dollars per quarter airlines have stepped up their level of cleaning every day.
That needs to continue. Covid-19 isn’t the only threat to health. People are going to have this experience fresh in their minds. Masks are likely to persist at least for some, even after they’re no longer required inflight. Airlines and hotels are going to need to compete on clean.
Many readers have said consistently throughout the pandemic that they will not travel until there is a vaccine. I think it’s the wrong paradigm for thinking about future travel both because a vaccine won’t be the cure all many people expect and because travel itself seems pretty safe, the issue is what you find at your destination.
We know a lot more about Covid-19 than we did three and four months ago. Much of what we think we know is still speculative. There’s learning which suggests real optimism, even as the virus spreads rapidly through much of the country (especially the southern portion). But the idea that we’re just hanging in for a vaccine, and once we have one everything goes back to normal, no longer holds up as we learn more about what vaccines against the novel coronavirus can do. At the same time it’s one part of a tool kit that will bring life and travel back to what it once was – and taken together likely even get us most of the way there in the first half of 2021.
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 »
