Tag Archives for new york.
At the start of 2020 a New York state Senator introduced a consumer protection bill to protect bank points. It prohibits bank points expiration and requires banks to give consumers 90 days to use their credit card rewards points if their account is closed either by the consumer or the bank.
I noted last summer that the legislation had passed the state’s Senate. Now the bill has passed both the Senate and state Assembly, and awaits the Governor’s signature.
New York City is expected to approve rules that would prevent opening new hotels.
This will mean fewer hotel rooms in the city, higher room rates, and fewer visitors as a result. It will therefore mean less tax revenue. It will mean less business for Broadway, for restaurants, for taxi cabs. Even the city’s own experts think this is insane.
New York State has had a challenging set of rules for travel. Anyone arriving from a state with more than 10 positive cases per 100,000 residents on a rolling average basis, or greater than 10% of Covid-19 tests coming back positive has had to quarantine for 14 days on arrival. Enforcement has been spotty.
With very few states left on the list of allowable travelers entering New York, the state is replacing that regime with mandatory pre-travel testing and shorter quarantine on arrival with a second test for everyone as an alternative to a 14 day quarantine.
New York City’s council passed a law allowing restaurants to add up to a 10% ‘Covid surcharge’ for eat-in dining. Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to sign it. It is stupid. Restaurants can already raise their prices.
This accomplishes two things: it lets restaurants charge a higher price than they advertise on their menus, and since customers are willing to pay a certain amount for their meal the surcharge reduces tips. It shifts income from restaurant workers to owners.
The federal government submitted false statements in court to defend terminating global entry applications for New Yorkers. Now the government said they just didn’t know what they were talking about when making the claims, rather than intentionally lying.
The real question here is whether’s it’s a bigger problem if the federal government lies to the courts, or if the people responsible for trusted traveler programs do not know what information they’re receiving, or what information they need, in order to determine eligibility?
In early February the Trump Administration announced that New York residents would no longer be allowed to enroll in or renew Global Entry (along with NEXUS and SENTRI). They claimed they needed access to New York’s DMV database as part of their identity verification process, and a change in state law denied them this access.
New York has changed its law to provide an exception for Global Entry applications, but not for immigration enforcement.
Airlines will be handing out quarantine forms for passengers to fill out when entering New York. Governor Cuomo also wants “a customs-like check-in at the airport” for domestic flights.
The forms will be used to enforce New York’s quarantine of arriving domestic passengers from states with “a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day rolling average or a state with a 10 percent or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.”
The lede to a piece in the New York Times on the bungled initial response to the novel coronavirus appears to suggest that the virus was first brought to New York by a Qatar Airways flight. It even further appears to suggest that if only New York had done a better job containing that first case, things would be different today. These claims make little sense.
On Sunday I wrote that American Airlines was operating more flights out of Newark airport than United Airlines. That seemed insane, considering United’s major hub at the airport. With the coronavirus crisis limiting air travel generally, and the New York area the current epicenter of fighting the virus in the United States, continuing to operate even 15 flights from Newark hardly seemed to make sense for American.
It seems the Dallas-based carrier realizes this, and has pulled down its schedule from the three major U.S. airports to just 13 flights in total from April 7 through May 6.
The saying ‘not all heroes wear capes’ has become trite and is frequently used ironically. But how else are you supposed to describe a Southwest Airlines plane full of doctors and nurses flying into the hardest hit region for the novel coronavirus?
Each of these women and men are taking on real personal risk to help the people of New York. There’s not enough personal protective gear. Over 50 doctors have died of COVID-19 in Italy so far. And yet they’re all smiling, even knowing what’s in store.
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 »
