Tag Archives for masks.
Outgoing American Airlines CEO Doug Parker made a point in his opening remarks to employees after completing the carrier’s fourth quarter earnings call this past Thursday. His remarks suggested that masks are an impediment to the return of business travel. The full return to normal is therefore going to necessarily involve lifting masking requirements.
On Wednesday’s American Airlines flight AA3573 from Key West to Miami, passengers missed connections after a 40 minute delay caused by a flight attendant kicking off a mother and her crying two year old who wouldn’t keep their mask on.
The whole planeload of passengers was offloaded, and when another passenger expressed frustration the flight attendant threatened to have her kicked off too for ‘smelling like alcohol’. On a 7 a.m. flight. Where both that passenger and flight attendant were wearing masks. The American Airlines slogan is caring for people on life’s journey.
Many public health officials see mask requirements as an ultra-low (or no) cost step to take to require them. There’s been a push from Biden insiders to make masks on planes permanent.
Anthony Fauci, on ABC’s This Week, was asked whether we would “get to the point where we won’t have to wear masks on airplanes?” His answer: “I don’t think so.”
At Congressional hearings this week, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said that masks provide little incremental benefit in air travel given the safety of the aircraft environment. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker chimed in, “I concur.” And has since been walking that back, though over the summer when virus prevalence was low he and the CEOs of United and Southwest were talking about ending the mask mandate.
So should we still be wearing masks on planes?
A passenger wearing a pair of women’s red underwear on his face was kicked off of a United flight in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday. And a second passenger removed himself from the flight in protest over the unfairness of it all. Naturally this happened in South Florida, and there’s video.
The Biden administration was considering severe air travel restrictions out of concern for the Omicron variant of the virus, but they couldn’t make the logistics of legality of some of them work. New restrictions were expected to be announced on Thursday, and now we know what they’re actually doing.
Tuesday night’s American Airlines flight AA322 was delayed 48 minutes after the aircraft returned to the gate to offload “two drunk unruly passengers” who cursed at cabin crew over mask requirements.
One of the men reportedly threatened a flight attendant, “Stop telling me to wear mask or I’ll slap the s[—] out of you!”
What’s an employee supposed to do when they see F-Fentanyl on a mask? American has said F-cancer is ok, after all.
When face mask policies were introduced for air travel last year, ‘but I’m drinking’ became a common excuse and passengers could nurse a Starbucks throughout the entire flight. This is no longer acceptable, or at least while some passengers will still do it – and some flight attendants allow it – the rule doesn’t permit it and you may get kicked off the plane.
You might say that airlines, as private businesses, should be allowed to choose not to transport anyone they wish. But this shouldn’t be viewed as private action, it is state action. The proposal comes in response to an FAA threat that airlines had one week to come up with a solution to unruly passengers.
There is a federal regulation in place on masking. That has a fine as a maximum penalty. Pressuring airlines to impose a more significant penalty than provided for in regulation or law is highly problematic.
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 »
