Tag Archives for masks.
House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) wrote to the TSA Administrator this week demanding the agency require people wear masks when going through security checkpoints.
The letter concludes that “a mask requirement is extremely important,” and it’s hard to disagree. The appropriate measure for members of Congress to take then is to pass such a requirement – there are four reasons why the TSA doing it on their own today would be illegal.
My home state of Texas is seeing a surge of cases, including in the Dallas area. But American Airlines flight crew at DFW and Dallas-based ground staff were photographed not wearing masks.
When airline employees don’t wear masks, they’re endangering passengers and scaring them away. That’s bad for business. And when employees don’t wear masks, passengers model them. It’s tough to get passengers to wear masks when pilots don’t.
Flight attendants at American Airlines are submitting “a couple dozen” reports per day on passengers refusing to wear masks, according to Senior Vice President of Flight Services Jill Surdek at a question and answer session with flight attendants this past week, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing.
Corporate security reviews each report and it’s a “super easy decision” to ban the passenger after they’ve been reported “multiple times.”
Maybe airlines could reward passengers with frequent flyers for mask wearing, if they’re refusing to serve alcohol to limit payment transactions they could comp alcoholic beverages to people who wear masks (though the masks have to be taken off to drink them). Maybe it’s time for a carrot as well as the toothless stick?
Despite airline requirements, customers continue to flout the rules. And one passenger did so with enough of a flair for the dramatic that his flight actually diverted.
Airlines For America, the major lobbying group whose members include the six largest U.S. airlines, announced today that face mask aren’t just required on board by their members but this time they mean it.
Only it’s not what crew are being told, such as this communication sent to American Airlines flight attendants today.
By now most people who pay attention to travel, or who are traveling, know that U.S. airlines by and large require passengers to wear masks. Allegiant is an exception.
Here’s an observation, though: they do not provide much guidance on what constitutes a mask. They also do not provide much guidance on how you’re required to wear the mask. And some passengers see a loophole.
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 »
