Tag Archives for canada.
A 239-mile Arctic hop in coach costs nearly $4,000 roundtrip—which can be more than a lie-flat seat from New York to London. Here’s why.
U.S. – Canada travel is down, and it’s likely economic activity is slowing more broadly. Headlines about a 70% decline though are just wrong. That would mean market abandonment at the sort of level we saw in late March 2020 and July 2020 without travel restrictions or a global pandemic.
This was a failure of U.S. authorities – suspecting someone as a drug courier over behaving like an airline employee. It was a failure of Canadian authorities, arresting someone based on a fallible test and locking them up for a week while slow-walking a real test. And it was a failure of the passenger, who didn’t secure legal representation (though as a 22 year old kid on an airline income that’s not surprising).
Ottawa is under siege from a protest by anti-vaccine mandate truckers. These are mostly non-violent protests, but also shutting down the city. Most of Canada is vaccinated. There’s little incremental benefit to requiring this of truckers, who spend most of their work time alone. And truckers tend to do this by choice. Take people choosing to work solo, and try to make them do something, this is the group most likely to rebel not just most reasonable in feeling justified at rebelling.
Their trucks are choking off streets in the capital and protesters started digging in for the long haul. And now… hotels are cancelling reservations.
When government knew little about its subjects, their location, and their wealth it was difficult to monitor, tax, and regulate. Over time we saw the development of permanent last names, land surveys and population measures, and standard weights. We get planned transportation networks. Local systems and customers were mapped onto more standard grids that allowed for central recording. State institutions seek to order nature and society.
And that, it seems, is why one woman can’t have her name printed on a passport.
U.S. Covid-19 travel bans make no sense. They are about politics, not science. Lifting travel restrictions looks weak, and the administration needs to appear to be ‘doing something’.
Keeping the U.S. – Canada border closed makes no sense. Infection rates and vaccination rates are roughly similar on both sides of the border. There are variants spreading already on both sides of the border, besides the restrictions weren’t tight enough to stop those anyway. The border has remained closed out of a desire to signal that the government is doing something (fear of foreigners plays in here) and bureaucratic inertia (status quo bias prevails when no one wants to be responsible for a mistake, outbreak or case cluster).
There’s finally some hope on the horizon.
Canada’s hotel quarantine rules had a loophole. Passengers returning to Canada by air had to spend three nights at a government quarantine hotel waiting for Covid-19 test on arrival results, while those who crossed the border by land could quarantine at home.
This can be avoided by flying into a U.S. airport near the Canadian border and renting a car or taking a cab. That’s exactly what’s happening.
The concern with travel abroad is that someone might become infected by the virus, including a new variant, and bring it back with them when they returned. But in this case the CEO was being vaccinated and the inactivated virus vaccine is highly likely not just to protect from symptoms but also infection (and spread). He’ll be less of a risk than most Canadians when he returns to the country. Getting vaccinated is a public benefit, not just a private one.
Furthermore, he’s now one less dose that Canada needs to provide for, meaning one more Canadian will get vaccinated more quickly. In places where vaccines aren’t widely available yet, three cheers for vaccine tourism!
Canadians are used to driving across the border into the U.S. to find cheaper airfare – even to get other places inside Canada. Flying from Canada to Mexico and back to Canada used to be known among frequent flyers as ‘the Mexican Hat Dance’. And the challenge of sky high fares for Canadians may get worse in the future with Air Canada acquiring Transat.
However Canadians have a new reason to make use of U.S. airports: a loophole that allows them to circumvent mandatory quarantine on arrival.
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 »
