Tag Archives for masks.
The FAA usually sees 100 – 150 cases of bad inflight behavior filed with them each year. Already this year there have been 2500, 1900 of which have deal with refusal to wear a mask. Most inflight disturbances don’t make it to the FAA.
We’ve seen a real increase in inflight conflicts, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. There are generally five reasons why we’re heading towards a new peak.
Marriott and Hyatt no longer require vaccinated guests to wear masks indoors at U.S. properties, except where required by law. Employees will still wear masks. Hilton, though, still requires indoor masking.
JetBlue flight 915 from New York JFK to San Francisco diverted to Minneapolis on Sunday after a passenger, who reportedly did lines of cocaine in the aircraft lavatory and made unwanted touching advances towards a woman on board, and made knifing gestures with his hands towards her.
The federal government just extended its public transportation mask mandate two weeks ago, to run through September 13th. Yet today the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks.
I’ve been very ‘pro-mask’ throughout the pandemic, arguing that flight attendants should be allowed to wear them back when airlines forbid it and the CDC wasn’t yet recommending it. I’ve even argued that conservatives should favor mask-wearing as a ‘conservative alternative to lockdowns’. I applauded JetBlue as the first U.S. airline to require masks for passengers. It helped build confidence to travel, knowing that everybody else on board would be wearing a mask.
However the federal transportation mask mandate is no longer useful, and may be counterproductive – even extending the pandemic in the United States.
A face mask brawl broke out at the Miami airport just a week after a fight broke out at Miami’s gate D14 over the last seats available to standby passengers on an American Airlines flight to Chicago. In other words, just another day at the Miami airport.
Florida. Masks. Trapped inside a metal tube. And a disproportionate number of first time leisure travelers. All passengers are Spirit Airlines passengers now.
Passengers refused to wear a mask on an Alaska Airlines flight. That got them banned from the airline. But it also burned their names and faces into the memory of a flight attendant who had to deal with them in the air.
The cabin crew member stalked their social media, and discovered that the people who wouldn’t wear a mask on their flight were willing to wear one for selfies at the January 6th Capitol Hill insurrection. Digging further it appeared from photos on Instagram that one of them was involved in taking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. The Alaska Airlines employee tipped off the FBI.
Mask rules made a lot of sense when airlines began requiring them. People should have been wearing higher quality masks and learning to wear them properly. Now that vaccines are available to any U.S. adult that wants one, the mandate should be allowed to expire. But government regulations tend to outlast their usefulness.
The mask mandate will end when the President is ready to declare victory over Covid-19.
An Alaska Airlines state senator who “has sparred with Alaska Airlines employees over the mask policy” since January has been banned from the airline – although apparently just for 30 days even though mask refusal is supposed to result in an indefinite ban, at least until the end of the mask requirement. It remains to be seen if a temporary suspension will be converted to a longer duration.
Lora Reinbold was recently fined $250 for refusing to properly wear a mask in the state capitol. On Thursday she was captured on video having a disagreement over keeping her mask above her nose at the Juneau airport before a flight to Anchorage.
The TSA’s mask rule is set to expire May 11. It will absolutely be extended, given the language of CDC regulations and lobbying by airlines and unions. However the mask rule is no longer needed for domestic flights.
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 »
