Tag Archives for masks.
Twenty three year odl Adelaide Schrowang thought she could pull off flying maskless on a Delta flight from Fort Myers. She refused to keep her mask over her nose and mouth while on the aircraft, and eventually police were brought to address it after she allegedly spit on passengers.
Video shows her interaction with police where she declares her human rights are being violated and she discovers that police officers are allowed to lie.
Last month I covered the passenger lawsuit to overturn the federal transportation mask mandate. Some of the arguments in the suit are legally persuasive, but included a lot of unpersuasive claims as well. I expected that the suit would be made moot by the expiration (and non-renewal) of the mask mandate on September 13, 2021 – before the case gets adjudicated.
However a couple of things have happened since then.
Texas Democratic legislators left the state in order to break quorum during a special legislative session and prevent Republicans from passing new voting legislation. This is the special session that was supposed to pass the bill the legislature ran out of time on when Democrats broke quorum last time.
They took two chartered flights on Monday from Austin to Washington D.C. to “apply pressure to Democrats in the U.S. Senate” to pass federal voting legislation to trump moves by Texas and other states.
Tomi Lahren, apparently, feels differently and reaches the Godwin’s law stage of the pandemic.
American Airlines flight AA893 from Charlotte to Nassau went mechanical on Monday, and the airline switched aircraft to get passengers on their way. Already delayed several hours, tensions were running high. And a group of high school students on board chose the moment they were on their second aircraft, ready to depart, to stage a mask protest that “lasted for hours.”
The Supreme Court refused to overturn the CDC’s eviction moratorium, even though a majority of justices believe that it is illegal. And the same reasons 5 justices believe the eviction moratorium is beyond the CDC’s authority apply to the federal transportation mask mandate as well.
The Points Guy ran a piece promoting continued mask-wearing after full vaccination, framed as a recommendation from “health professionals.”
What prompts this is the World Health Organization recommending continued mask-wearing after full vaccination.
Masks have been highly controversial and some of their biggest flash points have taken place on planes, from passengers getting ejected over not wearing them to the continued U.S. federal mask mandate for transportation when mask requirements are lifted in most other situations.
Perhaps the best mask study to date shows that just telling people they had to wear masks was a mistake. The policy focus should have been on supplying better masks and teaching people how to wear them effectively.
At a recent American Airlines employee question and answer event, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing, a flight attendant asked CEO Doug Parker about frequent inflight incidents with passengers. Parker acknowledged, “much of it is due to the masks, I know.” Parker predicts that the conflicts over masks “may get even harder between now and September 13th.”
U.S. airlines, represented by their lobbying group Airlines For America, have jointed the biggest airline unions in calling for the Department of Justice to prosecute passengers who cause flight disturbances.
Notably though 2300 of the 3000 reports of unruly behavior the FAA has received this year have been related to masks. Isn’t it striking that the airlines and unions don’t recognize that three quarters of the incidents, then, could be eliminated by lifting the mask mandate – that no longer makes any sense in any case?
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 »
