Tag Archives for coronavirus.
This month Delta Air Lines is rolling out anti-microbial bins at security checkpoints in their terminals at Atlanta, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, New York-LaGuardia and New York-JFK.
TSA screening bins have more germs than the monkey in outbreak. Your fellow sick passengers touch the bins, they even put their dirty tissues and handkerchiefs in them before going through the nude-o-scope pockets empty.
On board and inflight is one of the safest indoor environments from a Covid-19 transmission perspective. But that doesn’t mean that travel is safe. Most planes (but not smaller regional jets and turboprops) have HEPA air filtration that’s highly protective.
That doesn’t mean the virus doesn’t spread. Often when this and other viruses are attributed to flights it’s likely spreading at airport security, in the gate area, or on the jet bridge. These are places where passengers congregate closely together and where the air isn’t filtered as well.
The U.S. currently only permits 15 airports to receive flights from Europe (including the U.K.), China, or Brazil. That’s because passengers arriving on flights from these places are supposed to be specially screened for Covid-19, since they along with Iran are deemed high risk areas. This policy will be lifted on Monday, September 14.
It’s clearly time that Europeans should be allowed to enter the U.S. There’s no good virus-related reason to keep them out. But what about letting American’s visit Europe? The European Commission is recommending new guidelines for save travel, and the U.S. is on its way towards meeting their criteria.
This week we learned that Abbott Laboratories received an FDA Emergency Use Authorization for a faster and cheaper Covid-19 test than anything currently on the market.
Fast and cheap testing is one of the ways to bring travel back to normal. It would allow customers to travel with confidence, knowing that those around them are virus-free. And it would allow destinations to open up, knowing that people shedding the virus weren’t entering.
Since American Airlines only performs electrostatic spraying every 7 days a persistent chemical application is needed (in contrast to other airlines striving to spray between every flight). SurfaceWise 2 will kill viruses for at least a week.
The EPA has approved use of the chemical – but only for application in Texas airports and for flights departing Texas.
The C.D.C. though has finally recognized we’re no longer in the containment stage of the pandemic, where the virus might sneak into the country from abroad. So they’ve quietly lifted their recommendation that any travelers entering the U.S. quarantine for 14 days.
After all, unless passengers are coming from Chile, Peru, Brazil, India and a few other places they’re much less likely to be carrying the virus than people who are already here.
Back in May the process for entering Hong Kong was one of the most excruciating things I’ve seen in travel, taking the better part of a day. It involved being bused to the EXPO Center, long waits for testing and results, and receiving a monitoring bracelet.
While transit has opened up in some cases, the process for actually entering Hong Kong is still stringent – but has been substantially streamlined.
There’s an irrational belief that all travel is bad, even if holders of that belief cannot explain why all travel increases spread of Covid-19. And there’s a deep recession, and many people are hurting. So proponents of solidarity suggest everyone should suffer, or at least be shamed for not suffering.
Delta Air Lines is now doing temperature checks of passengers at LAX. Anyone departing from their terminal 2 (but not those making a domestic connection) will have their temperature scanned via thermal imaging camera. This is a test that Delta could roll out across other airports.
If the airport were doing this, it would be illegal. And it does very little to catch anyone with Covid-19. There are better alternatives.
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 »
