Tag Archives for masks.
I’ve argued for a year that the time to expect mask mandates to be lifted for planes would be before the mid term elections. It’s not case counts or hospitalization that will drive an end to pandemic rules, as much as political necessity.
This is what betting markets are predicting, too.
A woman sitting at near gate E6 for American Airlines flight AA6151 from Charlotte to Fayetteville, North Carolina on Tuesday was wearing a ‘space helmet’ over her mask. Since there don’t appear to be ear loops on the mask, it looks like an N95. That won’t be comfortable on a Piedmont Airlines Embraer ERJ-145 50 seat jet, but it’s just a 118 mile flight. It’s unclear where she may have been connecting from.
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.
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 »
