Travel

By Robert McGarvey

Reality check:  I did not in fact eat with Chris Bianco, the legendary Beard award winning Phoenix chef, but I did eat Sunday night at his restaurant Tratto in downtown Phoenix.

Am I insane? Arguably so.  But I think we did this cautiously, thoughtfully, and safely.  So that is the story I am telling.

The stakes are high. Life or death in fact. On that same day Arizona added 11795 new Covid-19 cases, with 3677 hospitalizations, and hospital beds are just about stuffed to capacity.  We are in a bad space and it will only worsen over the next two or three months.

I’m also aware that many places – New York included – have again shut indoor dining.  There is no denying the risks are real, especially indoors.

So why did the wife and I decide to go out to eat Sunday?  It was a birthday celebration, we honestly have not been to a table cloth restaurant in 9 months (and just two casual joints in that time span), and we both had immense curiosity about what Bianco is doing at Tratto, his fine dining establishment (he mainly is known for pizza).

The question came into focus because a few months ago Bianco moved Tratto from an upscale midtown location to a down at its heels location on Van Buren in downtown Phoenix where the eatery is surrounded by used car lots (“Your job is your credit report!”).  It’s not a dangerous location, just bleak.

But the restaurant Bianco has created is gorgeous.  Big, sprawling, a lovely setting for socially distanced dining.

There’s also – and this sold us on eating there – a big patio. No indoor dining for us.

We also got a 5:10p dining time, when our best guess was that the place would still be empty.

Even so, we did not go there without much thought.  And we decided to walk there – 3.7 miles distant from our home – because that just seemed safer than Uber or the lightrail (and we knew we’d have a couple tipples so driving was crossed off the options list). 

The walk was in lovely 60 degree weather, few on the streets, no need to wear a mask because we saw pretty much no one.

At the restaurant, the staffer at the reservations desk quickly takes the temperatures of diners.  We passed that muster and were shown to our table.

Out in the big patio there was only one other two top with diners.   

(Inside, in the huge restaurant, I believe three two tops were occupied. There was ample space for social distancing.)

Mask wearing on the patio was observed, except when eating or drinking.

What if there had been many more diners and mask scofflaws reigned? The feet that had taken us there would just as surely take us home and so they would have.

But that wasn’t necessary. Not with few diners and mask wearing.

This is about a restaurant meal so, yes, there was food. Lots of it.

To start a negroni. I do not know what Bianco’s mixologist uses – it’s not the standard recipe (gin, Campari, sweet vermouth) but it is damn good.  So good I had two waiting for the food to come to table and I do not usually drink cocktails.  

I’m sure Bianco would accommodate a traditionalist who insisted on the regular negroni recipe. But don’t.  Go with this alternative.  It’s a more sophisticated drink.

The Tratto negroni sets the tone. What’s served is familiar but, well, different.

For starters, we had “Little Gem Lettuce in Roasted Shallot Vinaigrette with Shave four-year Parmigiano Reggiano” and “Blue Sky Farms Fennel & Radicchio in Crow’s Dairy Quark with Persimmon, Pomegranate, AZ Pistachios & Honey.”

Bianco likes local products, but isn’t slavish about it, and he likes to mix unlikely ingredients (persimmon, pomegranate, pistachio). The salads are fresh, familiar but also exotic.  No tomato, you notice, but how hackneyed is that combo?

Servings are plentiful for sharing.

Followed by tagliatelle with braised short rib ragu. Thick, lovely ribbons of what I believe is housemade pasta.  The short rib is a condimento, the pasta is not drowned in the ragu, it is sparingly sauced to let the noodles star.  Lovely shaved parm on top.

Followed by “Roasted Blue Sky Farms Carrots with Grilled Spring Onion, Honey, Dill Salsa Verde, Quark, Crispy Garlic, Chili Oil” and a second dish of “Poached Blue Sky Farms Cabbage with Aioli & Bread Crumbs.”

The cabbage is charred, the carrots are poached to a natural sweetness. Get the dishes together. It’s a perfect vegetable plate when paired.

What for dessert? Nothing.  We were full and it was time to hit the road before more diners trickled in. And we had a walk in front of us.

Are we still healthy and Covid free? So far and I doubt that will change. If it does, you will hear about it.  Promised.

But here’s the takeaway.  Restaurant dining may still be safe when you pick the right venue – with an outdoor option! – and the right, slow time slot.  Wear a mask except when eating and drinking.

None of this is rocket science.  But it just may keep us safe while we still enjoy a well chosen restaurant outing.

by Robert McGarvey

Call me a travel optimist. Last Saturday, after thinking on the matter for a few days, I renewed TSA Precheck despite having not been on a plane in six months. But I wanted to see how the process worked – smooth? bumpy? – and I also have started a new project that may require cross-country flights and for that I wanted to know I had Precheck in hand.

Besides, I had no money to lose. Amex Plat will pick up the cost.

Know this: it took just a couple minutes to fill in the forms online and within four hours I had a notification that it was being renewed. No need for an appearance in person.

None of my identifying facts had changed in four and one-half years: same address, same name, same cellphone number, even the same credit card. So there was nothing to trigger curiosity about me. But, still, I have to say: the process is smooth.

Covid-19 makes PreCheck more useful, too, according to reporting in the Washington Post: “What we have seen is that wait times in general are in the neighborhood of five minutes or less, and PreCheck can go even quicker,” Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, told Wapo.

Additionally, with PreCheck, you don’t have to touch and remove a bunch of things such as your shoes, a light jacket, and most electronics (which can go through the inspection tucked inside your bag).

That makes PreCheck a terrific buy at the price I pay.

Now, why do I think I will be flying more soon? Of course it’s not just the project I mentioned, it’s my own readiness to consider air travel mainly because the vaccines that are speeding down the pike are plenty to raise confidence.

According to a New York Times widget that predicts when a person will get the vaccine – it asks age, residence, pre-existing conditions – 118 million of my fellow Americans are ahead of me but a good guess is that I will be vaccinated by mid year. I will probably get it then, too, because there will be plenty of arms injected before mine and that will raise my confidence in the drugs.

Besides, I may already have some degree of immunity because I had the disease last March, which was corroborated by a June antibody test. I am not banking on that immunity but the probability that I have some lets me stay relaxed with 118 million in front of me. Others may need it sooner, let them have it.

Then, too, as s many as one-third of us are saying nothing doing, they say they will refuse the vaccine. I imagine that number will dip as (and if) we see vaccinations are proceeding with few significant side-effects. But the line may move even faster than some think if there are plenty of anti-vaxxers.

Remember, too, that in 1955, as the US speeded to inoculate the nation’s children against polio, there was the so-called Cutter Incident, named after the lab that produced bad doses, which resulted in some 250 cases of polio. That is, the vaccine caused the very disease it was intended to prevent,

Yes, that number of cases was small but it was large for those who were crippled and their images haunted many leading edge Baby Boomers. The images persist today.

My other concern is that the vaccines in the final stages of approval require multiple doses, delivered at rather specific time intervals, and the drugs also require extremely cold storage. We shall see how good we as a people are at remembering to go for the follow up shot and we shall also see how good pharmacies, physicians’ offices, and hospitals are at cold storage. A lot of moving parts are involved in delivering something that looks like a national immunity.

We will get all that sorted. I cannot say by when. But we will.

And we will be flying again. Probably not as much as before – I believe the predictions that business travel will be down by one-third for some years to come – but we will fly again.

Are you ready? You know I am. The Precheck renewal proves it.

by Robert McGarvey

Just do it: decide that this year’s December festivities – Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever you wish to celebrate with gatherings of family and friends – is a no go in 2020, a kind of unawares suicide mission.

The CDC is not mincing words in its advice. “The best thing for Americans to do during the holiday season is to stay at home and not travel,” said Dr. Henry Walke, who is in charge of day to day management of the response to the pandemic.

That could not be plainer. Stay home.

But my additional advice is this: cancel big family 2020 holiday get togethers but make firm – and glorious – plans for a huge December 2021 celebration.

2020 is a bust. But 2021 is a different, cheerier reality.

Still, we have to start with this blunt truth: this December offers no basis for partying in groups.

We missed that message in November and now we are paying the price.

Some 9.4 million of us passed through TSA airport screening over the 10 days of Thanksgiving season. Yes, that volume is way down from 2019 when a record 2.9 million of us were screened on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and just 1.17 million were screened on that day this year.

But our travel numbers were way too high for a nation fighting a losing battle with a pandemic.

So now the virus surges. As experts knew it would.

As the Mississippi Free Press headline trumpeted: “After Big Thanksgiving Dinners, Plan Small Christmas Funerals, Health Experts Warn.”

White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told CBS, “We know people may have made mistakes … over the Thanksgiving time period. If your family traveled, you have to assume that you are exposed and you became infected and you really need to get tested in the next week.”

Right now, 13.8 million of us are known to have had the disease. 271,000 of us have died with more than 2500 new deaths daily. The death total likely will be near 350,000 by the end of December.

It may eclipse 400,000 by Inauguration Day.

We are in a killing season. In Arizona, hospitals admit they are scrambling to try to cope with surging Covid-19 cases. “The number one limiting factor is staffing right now,” Ann-Marie Alameddin, president and CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, told the Arizona Republic. “It’s a much tighter supply because the whole country is in need of the same skill set.”

In New York, the state is implementing “emergency” hospital measures to try to keep pace with Covid-19 cases.

In California the alert is out that ICUs may soon be “overwhelmed.”

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti has declared “it’s time to cancel everything.”

What we don’t need is a surge in cases triggered by December holiday festivities.

And we also don’t need a wave of cases triggered by so-called Covid fatigue where some of us seemingly have tired of masks and social distancing.

And yet, where I live in central Phoenix, ever more people seem determined to exercise an erroneously claimed “right” not to wear a mask.

As Helena Rosenblatt, a history professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, wrote in a Washington Post piece, “Do individuals have a constitutional right not to wear masks? They do not.

“Are such mandates undermining American democratic government? They are not.”

And similarly there are those who insist they have a Constitutional right to celebrate their holidays as they wish.

But I have every right to steer clear of them and I will exercise my right.

It’s not just the United States that is grappling with this problem. Across Europe, the alarms are ringing that bustling family holiday gatherings will represent a risk not just to the immediate attendees but to their communities. This is a highly infectious disease.

In Belgium, the prime minister even invokes a stark and graphic metaphor. Leave empty chairs around the dining table this year or risk having permanently empty chairs in years to come.

That is a gruesome image. But it also is relevant because the pandemic has regained velocity in much of the US and in parts of Europe.

That is why we are in for sedate, subdued, low key holiday festivities. There is no other sanity in our present moment.

But think of the bright side – 2021 is coming and with it a vaccine that may be “widely available” by mid year and will probably be in every arm in the US that wants it by Q4.

Which puts us squarely in the holiday season.

Tell me that you are planning a holiday 2020 blowout and I will tell you it is a terrible idea.

But tell me you are planning a 2021 celebration that may be your life’s best and I will ask for an invite.

That’s a celebration we will all deserve because we will have been through so much getting there and when we do get there, a year from now, it’s time to pop the good champagne and yell a merry cheers. I know I will.

By Robert McGarvey

Hold the euphoria, pass the reality pills when the talk shifts to exploring when in-person business events will resume in full force.

And always remember: money talks, b.s. walks and in this case money is talking very loudly and not in favor of the resumption of many in-person meetings. Specifics on that towards the bottom of the piece.

First, however, let us marvel at the giddiness that is sweeping the events and meetings world as genuinely good news about two vaccines – Pfizer and Moderna – has been released and now there is a poll of event planners where almost two in three said they envisioned holding in-person meetings and incentives by mid 2021. And do note: that optimism was recorded before the upbeat news about the vaccines came out. I wouldn’t be surprised if now 90% would forecast a mid 2021 return to the good old days of meetings.

That survey asked 447 planners and most said we should be packing our bags and planning to attend a business event by mid year 2021.

I don’t believe it.

I would like to, I just don’t.

There are many reasons for my skepticism.

It starts with a strong belief that we will not have wide distribution of vaccines in the US until late 2021 at the soonest.  

Creating the vaccine is one thing. Distributing it another.  The Pfizer vaccine for instance has to be stored at -70 Celsius which equals -94F. I do not know about you but I have never experienced -94F and my understanding is that many physicians’ offices, pharmacies and similar places where vaccines would be distributed do not off hand have that capability.  Yes, they could jerry-rig a deep freeze using dry ice.  But will they?

The Moderna vaccine needs storage at -20 Celsius which is around the 0 F that a home freezer maintains.  It shouldn’t be a problem for the vaccine supply chain.

It also is very unclear that many states will have the money and the staffing to distribute the vaccines.  Federal funding and support has been expected but, so far, it’s a no show and the outgoing administration seems ever more detached from the business of governing.  Of course the incoming Biden Administration will take action – but two months also will have been lost and that is bad news given the magnitude of the on the ground distribution of vaccines to hundreds of millions of us.

 But then there is the matter of a lot of anti-vaxxer Americans – perhaps one in three – who will decline to get the vaccine. Just 58% said they planned to get vaccinated in a recent Gallup poll. The more who choose to sit this out, the more cases there will be.

So count me as not seeing a mid 2021 resumption of meetings.

Know I am not the only skeptic about meetings not popping up on the calendar anytime soon.

In Phoenix, for instance, the city owned Convention Center – which lives on business meetings – recently announced plans to reassign considerable staff to other city departments and to cut hours of part-timers.  These are painful decisions for this government.

The city said convention business had dropped 73% year on year.

There is no accepted timeline for when business might return to pre pandemic levels at the Convention Center.

New York City, meantime, is not forecasting a return of its tourism business to pre pandemic levels until 2025. A lot of that traffic of course has been business related, including many events and meetings.

This year the city will do about one-third of the tourism business it did pre-pandemic.

And then there is the sound of money talking, big money talking very loudly about travel – namely the nearly $1 billion Amazon has saved in lower travel expenses in the Covid-19 era.  Early in the pandemic Amazon told employees to halt non essential travel and halt they did, said Amazon CFO Brian Oslavsky in the Q3 earnings call.

Oslavsky speculated that internal travel – that is, for inhouse meetings – will probably return but, he said, it may not return to the level it once was.

Bill Gates chimes in with a prediction that post Covid business travel will be a reduced 50% rate.

I think that is spot on.  I envision a return to travel to support sales, possibly in mid 2021, probably by late 2021.

I do not see when inhouse travel will return.  I am not saying it never will. Just that I do not see a date where it looks likely.

And an awful lot of business travel has been intramural. Not just at Amazon but at every big company with multiple locations.

Some of that travel involved enough people for convention center spaces to be put to use.  But maybe not again in the near future.

Meantime, too, even the meeting planners in the poll cited earlier admit that virtual and hybrid meetings very much figure into their planning.  In fact, 72% said that at least some of their planned 2021 events will be virtual or hybrid.  

I’d say that sounds right. Like it or no, when we next meet it is likely to be virtually. For some months to come.

By Robert McGarvey

It was just seven or eight months ago that most air carriers dramatically reduced – often they eliminated – food and beverage service inflight and yet here we now are where the question for the moment is, is it safe to eat and drink on a plane? The related question: is it safe for me as a passenger if those around me eat and drink even if I don’t? A third question: is it safe for me to have flight attendants serving food and beverage and moving down the aisle?

The questions have come into focus for two reasons.  The first: many experts now are predicting a sharp rise in Thanksgiving travel – that’s just two weeks away.  A good response is to shudder in fear. But it nonetheless is the current forecast despite the facts that now every day sees 100,000+ new cases and just about every state shows rising rates and some show surging rates. Put more people in planes and airports and an unavoidable consequence is that there will be spiking Covid-19 cases. Yes, most surveys say drive traffic will be the main transportation mode at Thanksgiving (as it usually is) but many in aviation are predicting a bullish Thanksgiving weekend.

The second reason:  More carriers have resumed inflight food and beverage service.  For instance, on American Airlines flights between 900 and 2199 miles, “All passengers are provided a bag with a packaged snack, a bottle of water and hand sanitizer during boarding (not available on American Eagle flights),” reported The Points Guy.

Many carriers have done likewise. Some are resuming sales of wine and beer. We aren’t back to the old “normal,” but airlines are creeping in that direction.

Let me picture this. I am jammed in the middle seat in coach and to my right and also my left passengers remove their face masks and begin to chomp and slurp.

Why don’t I like that picture?

An oft quoted study out of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health noted that on the carriers that mandate mask wearing (all leading US carriers included: “The only time a passenger onboard is permitted to remove their mask briefly is while eating and/or drinking. Most airlines have limited the beverage and snack service on board, and/or have suspended it altogether on shorter flights, and/or suspended offering food for purchase. Some airlines only offer or sell bottled water or have available a pre-sealed snack bag for customers, which can be self-served or provided upon request. One airline has straws available upon request.”

The Harvard scientists seem okay with that but, remember, the study had significant support from Airlines For America, an industry lobbying group.  At least some critics have rejected the study’s validity on that basis.  

But now we are talking about resuming actual in-cabin service and that is a wholly new problem.  

A recent Washington Post “By the Way” story quoted “the associate dean of public health sciences at the University of California at Davis, Bradley Pollock, who said he would be more comfortable flying if airlines continued to minimize their flight attendants’ cabin movement. ‘I would not be happy if a flight attendant physically reaches over me to serve a window seat customer their drink,’ Pollock says. ‘I’d also like my row mates to keep their masks on as much as possible.’”

Infectious disease specialist at the Univ. of Alabama David Freedman told Wapo that in addition to seeing limits on crew movement, which may be linked to virus spread, “I would like to see mask off [time] limited to 10 minutes at a time, and not allowed simultaneously by adjacent passengers.”

That is the question.  Can you envision making a deal with adjacent seatmates where you divvy up flight times and mask free moments for eating and drinking?

In a perfect world, yes.

But not in this world.

In this world I live in a highrise with small elevators that can safely accommodate no more than two masked passengers at a time – and yet often several people, some unmasked, barge in when I am aboard.  I of course get off, abruptly but silently.  What would be the point of complaining about their selfish insensitivity?  And I take the steps down to the street.

Good exercise indeed and I forget my grumbles.

I couldn’t do that on a plane.

Personally, what I would do inflight is simply not eat. The food sucks (even in business class) so no big loss.

I also plan not to drink, not even on x-country flights, if only to let me avoid using the lavatories (and I have zero trust in them in the Covid-19 era).  

If we all did that, flying would be a better, safer thing. Especially if we all wore masks throughout our flights and airport minutes.

I do know I will feel more comfortable if my seatmates joined me in not eating and drinking and always wearing a mask inflight.

Will they?

Many of us are about to find out.

By Robert McGarvey

By Robert McGarvey

If you don’t know where your frequent flier miles and hotel loyalty points are the bad news is that cyber crooks just may. That’s because, with most of us traveling so much less in the last eight months, we have become less focused on our loyalty totals – why check a balance that is inert? Add in the deep economic hits suffered by travel providers in the pandemic, and resulting slashing of staffing, and a perfect invitation was in effect extended to cyber criminals.  Call this invitation accepted.

According to research out of Akamai, “Between July 2018 and June 2020, Akamai observed more than 100 billion credential stuffing attacks, and more than 63 billion of them targeted retail, travel, and hospitality.”

Chew on the magnitude of this attack. Billions and billions of them! And Akamai numbers show the number of attacks increasing in the pandemic.

Criminals have gotten smarter about how to cash in on the full value of our points and miles. Used to be a cyber criminal did a simple smash and grab once he/she had log-in credentials.  He’d empty the points balance, cashing them in for readily monetized goods (Apple gear has been a favorite).  

Today’s hacker might still do that. But many are seeking out other ways to cash in on our loyalty.

Nowadays that hacker is likely to monetize the information about you that they steal in the hack. Usually there’s a name, an address, a phone number, possibly a passport number, often a credit card number, etc.  Said Steve Ragan, an Akamai security researcher, “Retail and loyalty profiles contain a smorgasbord of personal information, and in some cases financial information too. All of this data can be collected, sold, and traded or even compiled for extensive profiles that can later be used for crimes such as identity theft.”

Back up a second. In case you stumbled over the infosec geek term “credential stuffing” this is where where crooks try a log in that’s been stolen from one site – say from the Starwood breach where some 500 million guest records were stolen – at random sites.  Computers do the work. Crooks collect the winnings when the log ins work at more sites and often they do because we all know we shouldn’t reuse log ins but we all do anyway.

In recent years criminals have harvested bounties of credentials from various programs, Hilton, United, and American included as well as Starwood. There are mountains of travel related data already in the hands of cyber criminals. And the crooks are credential stuffing at a pace that has never before been seen.

Today, too, there are still more ways to monetize our data.  For instance: Now some hackers prefer to sell your account to another crook, inclusive of any miles or points in the kitty. Reports Akamai, “Hotel rewards are also popular, including those from major chains like Hilton. Accounts are sorted and sold based on their point value.”  How much? In its report Akamai shows an ad where one seller offers Hilton accounts with at least 10,000 points for $3 apiece and accounts with 40,000 points sell for $40.  Accounts with million point balances fetch $850.

Still others actually sell travel on the dark web. Noted Akamai: “Many of the travel listings on the darknet charge a percentage of the overall trip cost, anywhere from 25% to 35% — meaning a $2,000 booking on a well-known travel comparison/booking website would cost about $700 on the darknet.”

You’ve gotten the message: your loyalty stashes are in peril?  

Here’s what you need to do: Right now, go to your top travel loyalty sites and change the passwords. Use a password manager – I use Google’s but there are many – to generate a long, random string. And use a different password at every site. Then set a reminder in your calendar to change the passwords every three or six months.

That isn’t perfect protection. But it is pretty good.  

What about accounts with trivial balances? I ignore them for now. I have 2, or is it 3, nights in the Hilton program from a meeting I attended but I installed the app only because I have status via Amex and the status got me a few perks.  On a very slow day I will log in and use a random password.  But it’s not a priority.

The takeaway here is that our loyalty miles and points are under attack.  It’s up to us to protect them – and if we don’t they just may be stolen when next we look for them.

By Robert McGarvey

Even as the nation’s air carriers do the right thing they manage to screw it up.

Case in point this week.  First I saw a story that led me to want to applaud the courage of some carriers.

Then I saw a story that left me swearing at the carriers’ executives for their greed which threatens our health and defies commonsense.

First the good news: The WAPO headline tells it –  Delta, United and Alaska Airlines have banned more than 900 passengers for not wearing masks.  Bravo, if the emasculated federal government cannot summon the bottle to issue a mask mandate for public places – an action it should have taken months ago – it’s up to the airlines and some have stepped up.

I know flight attendants – understandably – hesitated to get involved in insisting on masks. They understood there are nutters who believe they have an inalienable right to go maskless (probably they think it is the US Constitution). But airlines and their flight attendants have done the right thing here.

And the carriers have upped the ante by issuing flight bans. Delta leads the pack – it has banned 460 passengers. United has eighty-sixed 300. Alaska has booted 146.  

American and Southwest, sadly, declined to issue counts.  American Airlines did tell the Washington Post this: “We expect our customers to comply with our policies when they choose to travel with us,” American Airlines spokesperson Curtis Blessing said. “We take action when that is not the case, but the vast majority of our customers have supported and welcomed our continuing efforts to strengthen our face covering policy based on the CDC’s guidance … we may deny future travel for customers who refuse to wear a face covering for the duration of this requirement.”

No, I haven’t an idea what that is supposed to mean and, for now, I won’t be flying American or Southwest anytime soon.

Which brings us to the two steps back.  Southwest Airlines has joined the list of carriers who say they will stop blocking middle seats.  They start stuffing coach on December 1 (and I do wonder how many passengers will fall ill with Covid-19 due to holiday travel).

According to a tally by The Points Guy the only carriers that are sticking with an empty middle seat policy are Alaska, Delta, and Hawaiian.  

That is inexplicable. We are not flying because we fear getting the virus in the air…and we also know two things that are helpful in curtailing spread of Covid-19: mask wearing and social distancing, the latter being all the more important indoors (as in an airplane!).  

Meantime, a seven hour flight to Ireland is linked to a staggering 59 Covid-19 cases in Ireland, according to a new report: “An outbreak of 59 cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) originated with 13 cases linked by a 7 h, 17% occupancy flight into Ireland, summer 2020. The flight-associated attack rate was 9.8–17.8%. Spread to 46 non-flight cases occurred country-wide.”

Of course I know about a new Harvard report that says, hogwash, air travel is safe. But I also know the carriers paid for the report and that causes me to keep looking for data.

Such as? Another recent report looked specifically at the question: does keeping middle seats empty impact Covid-19 spread. The authors’ conclusion: unquestionably yes.  Here is what they write: “We use recent data and research results and a probabilistic model to estimate the chance that an air traveler in coach will contract Covid-19 on a US domestic jet flight two hours long, both when all coach seats are full and when all but middle seats are full. The point estimates we reach based on data from late September 2020 are about 1 in 3,900 for full flights and 1 in 6,400 when middle seats are kept empty.”

That’s commonsense. When you sit literally elbow to elbow next to a passenger in coach your chances of getting any and all contagious diseases rise.  An empty middle seat is no panacea.  But it definitely makes the flight safer.

No wonder I have re-installed my Delta Sky app – and of course I have now downloaded Alaska Air too.

Note to self: change Amex Plat $200 airline credit from American to Delta in January.  Besides, Delta has spiffy new digs at Sky Harbor and there’s a new 7500 sq. ft Sky Club there too.  That, plus a tough mask policy and empty middle seats win my business.

By Robert McGarvey

Airline executives and their lobbyists are thick as locusts on Capitol Hill as they make a last minute push for another federal bailout. Their opening bid is $25 billion. But they would take more. And some inside the Beltway support this public largesse.

What’s wrong with that? The better question: is anything right with the idea?

Look, I take no joy in the many tens of thousands of unemployed airline employees. It’s a bloodbath. In Phoenix, for instance, the number of flight attendants has gone from 1900 a year ago to around 1000 today. That’s a lot of human suffering. Airline employees and those in related industries have gotten screwed in this pandemic and, often federal aid that was supposed to go to them, in fact went to executives, according to a US House report.

But face this reality: with or without new federal handouts, the airline business is going to shrink. By a lot. The chairman of United has said carriers may shrink by half.

The International Air Transport Association says air traffic will not reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024 and maybe not that quick.

Rising skepticism about the Trump tainted vaccine program – with New York and California governors both saying go slow – makes it ever less likely that many of us will flock for vaccines in the early going. And yet most experts say air traffic will not begin to rebound until vaccines have been widely distributed.

Surviving airlines will in fact shrink – they will literally often fly smaller planes and they will also shrink route maps.

And a lot of airlines just will go bust.

Many already have. Here’s a Forbes list from June. LATAM and Avianca had already filed bankruptcy (although both are seeking to reorganize).

In the US, View from the Wing has said the US carriers most likely to have their day in bankruptcy court are American and United.

According to CNBC, 43 commercial carriers already have failed outright this year. More will. The CNBC story ominously warns that historically airlines build up their cash reserves in the summer so they can survive the lean winters. This year winter is coming but summer has been a bust. Buckle up. Many more carriers will fold.

Haven’t I just made a powerful case for why we need massive federal bailout monies for airlines and we need it now? Nope. That would be the proverbial good money after bad.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, author Roger Lowenstein (“America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve“) said: “The urge to rescue the airlines flows from good intentions, but it is not a smart way to help the economy and it will reward CEOs for serial mismanagement and self-enrichment.”

Lowenstein added: “There is no reason to single out employees of a particular industry for favored treatment. And the airline industry is among the least deserving. In fact, the bailout will reward the carriers for egregious overcompensation and share buybacks.”

Writing in Wolf Street, Wolf Richter documents the many billions airlines spent in recent, flush years on stock buybacks, enriching executives and some shareholders. This is money that could have been tucked away for the inevitable rainy days – airlines are cyclical industries that get battered in recessions. They also are battered by rising petroleum costs. Bad times are inevitable for them. But, no, US carriers did not stach cash. They spent it on stock. Per Richter, “the big four airlines blew, wasted, and incinerated $44.6 billion in cash on share buybacks from 2012 through Q1 2020.”

In 2017-2019, executive compensation at just the top three carriers hit $325 million.

If they had held onto just half of the dough spent on buybacks and bloated paychecks they would not be on bended knees begging the House and Senate for yet more free money.

And they already got $25 billion in cash to cover payroll plus a like amount in low interest loans in April from the federal government. That money ran out in late September, said the carriers, and thus the rounds of layoffs.

There is no reason whatsoever to think airline executives will behave more rationally and prudently going forward. They have a long history of blowing bailout cash – and then yet again getting caught flatfooted in the next bad economy.

It’s time to go Darwinian. Let those that can survive – by virtue of their wits, budget cutting and strong management – survive. The others will perish. There can be scant optimism about the future for today’s airline executives who are good at creating personal wealth but not much else.

And as the public’s appetite for air travel rebounds, new solutions will emerge.

It was once inconceivable that the US economy could function without GM and Ford – and now does anyone notice they are still here? Tesla’s market cap is double GM’s and almost three times Ford’s. And we are not short of automobile options.

Only 60 companies in the Fortune 500 in 1955 were still around in 2017. We are in an age of creative upheaval. And so it comes for air carriers.

There is plenty of reason for a similar embrace of transformation in air travel. When the passengers are there, so will the new carriers.

By Robert McGarvey

Call it seven hours of inexplicably unaware vanity flying.

That was the recent Qantas flight to nowhere which stuffed 150 travel starved flyers onto a 787 Dreamliner that – flying at altitudes as low as 4000 feet – went literally nowhere. Passengers paid $566 to $2734 for seats in economy, premium economy and business class.

The flight apparently sold out in 10 minutes.

The usual reason for buying: the passengers just missed flying. So when Qantas came up with this idea – Australia’s borders are closed so external flights are a no-go – people bought.

One has to assume that none of the passengers can spell “climate change” without help.

The stunning fact is that there are many more such flights to nowhere. And people are buying them.

Air travel produces about 3% of the world’s carbon emissions. A Guardian story reported, “Taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average person in dozens of countries around the world produces in a whole year, a new Guardian analysis has found.

The figures highlight the disproportionate carbon footprint of those who can afford to fly, with even a short-haul return flight from London to Edinburgh contributing more CO2 than the mean annual emissions of a person in Uganda or Somalia.”

It is one thing if a flight is to return home to be with a sick relative, to attend a close friend’s birthday party, or to close a big business deal. All valid reasons, all reasons we all have had for flying before.

Offhand the only flights I regret taking are two where I discovered upon heading to the meeting location that the event had been abruptly cancelled (a federal courthouse hearing in New Orleans and a trade association committee meeting at Newark Airport) and that isn’t bad in multiple decades of flying. No argument from me: where long distances are involved, I will be flying.

Yes, nowadays I will question if the event is actually necessary and I will also question if it could be done virtually. But when in-person is the best way, I’ll fly when a drive would be more than 4 or 5 hours.

And I’ll defend my choices.

But I also acknowledge that climate change is a reality – where I live in Phoenix we are recording one of our hottest years, ever. In Sonoma County, CA, where I used to live, wildfires have ravaged tens of thousands of acres. Up the west coast, the destruction is monumental. I own property in Taos County NM and that state has significant water issues that are exacerbated by climate change. Only a blithering idiot would deny the reality of climate change.

So I find myself rationing my own carbon impacts. I drive much less (walking is good for you!). I turn up the thermostat in the long Sonoran desert summer. In just about every way I strive to produce a little less carbon.

That of course means flying only when necessary.

And then I read about what amounts to a new fad, flights to nowhere, where the environmental impacts are real – but not much else is.

In Taiwan, for instance, three carriers – EVA, Starlux Airlines and China Airlines – are offering flights to nowhere and they are filling up.

Here’s what they experience, per the South China Morning Post: “The captain of EVA Airways Flight BR5888 tells his 309 passengers – a full cabin – he will fly east from Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport, to give them an ‘extremely clear’ view of the airport on the tiny Japanese island of Yonaguni, before swinging the aircraft back, and then towards Taiwan’s southernmost peninsula. The 2.5-hour flight will land where it took off.”

Really? Not only is this environmentally harmful it’s flagrantly unimaginative.

For four years Google has offered a VR ride that will let “passengers” experience “the whole wide world.”

In Japan there’s even something of a fad centered around VR flights. Per the Washington Post, “When an in-flight virtual reality experience called First Airlines started offering faux flights in the Ikebukuro neighborhood of Tokyo in 2017, you could say it was ahead of its time. Three years later, in the grips of a global pandemic that has grounded the vast majority of flights, Tokyo’s business travelers are leaning on the VR experience for a taste of international travel without leaving their city.”

No carbon involved.

VR flights are, well, odd – but if that’s your pleasure, have at it.

Flights to nowhere are different. They give all flying a bad rep.

And with US and European companies looking for every reason to flatten travel budgets for years to come, it just doesn’t pay to make plane travel into an unfunny joke with real environmental consequences.

So far, thankfully, flights to nowhere have not caught on in the US or Europe.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

And if there are complaints about the end of truly pointless flying, tell ’em to go eat cake. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

That will distract them from the rolling tumbrils.

By Robert McGarvey

Here’s your choice: pick a hotel with lots of contactless tech (check in via phone, room entry via phone, etc.) or one with plenty of Covid-19 combat gear ready for you (masks, sanitizers, etc.). Which do you want?

Does it have to be a choice? Excellent question but play along because hotel booking site HotelsByDay recently did a survey of some 1000 travelers and asked them what they expected from a reopened hotel.  

Most wanted: hand sanitation stations (53% of us).  Least wanted: contactless check in, check out (39%).

Falling in the middle are: mask requirements for staff and guests (50%); and a welcome package with safety items such as a mask and sanitizer (43%).

Ignore for now that a full half of respondents are blithering idiots who don’t demand that there be a mask requirement for guests and staff alike.  Note: I would not stay in a hotel that did not require that and will walk out of one that, when I arrive, I realize isn’t enforcing their requirement (and they can go pound sand in trying to collect any cancellation fees).  

The reason these poll results fascinate me is that hotels have in fact been doubling down on contactless since the advent of Covid-19 (and the realization that it will be with us for a while, at least another year).  Indeed the April headline in a trade pub reads: Hilton Doubles Down on Contactless and similar can be said about every other big group.

Are they barking up the proverbial wrong tree?

I don’t think they are – indeed I believe the mid-range future of hotels and resorts will hinge on having lots of contactless tech and, really, there is no reason for human to human interaction at a check in desk (look at how many hotels have eliminated person to person checkout), there is no reason to insist we use those always failing plastic cards to get into rooms, and there is less than no reason to insist we hand a credit card to a server at a bar or restaurant.  All those are ideal for touchless.  Hotels just have dragged in adoption but so they always do because they are skinflints about tech. Now it is time to get moving because your guests will demand it, especially the age 40 and younger guests who increasingly will dominate.

But I think the either/or, either contactless or masks, is bogus. We can and should have both to safely travel in 2020-2021, the era of Covid-19.

Which brings us back to masks and hand sanitizers which, along with social distancing, are the three best steps we and others around us can take to keep ourselves healthy and safe. That understood, prepare to get mad.  Here’s the lead from a recent story in Phocuswire: “Retail automation company Swyft is partnering with CVS to bring contactless kiosks to hotel lobbies.

“In addition to typical vending products such as snacks and toiletries, the machines will also be stocked with personal protective equipment such as masks and hand sanitizer. 

Guests can make purchases from the kiosks any time of day using their smartphones.”

That means the push is on to monetize the supplies we might need to stay safe in a hotel.

Talk about chutzpah. 

Flashback to the aftermath of 9/11. Remember how many hotels began stocking complimentary toiletries, shaving kit, toothbrushes, etc?  Often we lost our toiletries in the then new TSA lines, or they got confiscated for being too big.  Rather than nickel and dime the stalwart guests who nonetheless traveled in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, many hotels and resorts thoughtfully stocked complimentary toiletry kits.

Today however the hotelier’s eye is on Mammon – if, that is, CVS and its vending machine partner are calling this right.

Let’s hope they are wrong, for our own sakes and but also for the industry’s.

Good news: So far, no hotels have signed up for the machine.  Another story, in Vending Times, mentions machines in LaGuardia and also Boston’s South Station Bus Terminal.  No hotels or resorts are mentioned, except in this vague claim: “CVS said it is considering an additional 50-plus locations throughout the country including college campuses, corporate offices, hotels and other transportation hubs to host vending machines in the future.”

There is hope.  Hoteliers may realize that gouging guests a few quid for a mask and hand sanitizer is over the top when that hotelier should in fact be prostrate and kissing the feet of the hardy guest who braves Covid-19 worries to check in.

Especially when I shop at Whole Foods I am handed a mask, gratis, and there’s sanitizer spray that’s also free.  It’s not expecting much to get that stuff for free when I am spending a couple hundred bucks, often much more, for a bed.

Memo to hoteliers: Don’t be pennywise. Hand out masks and sanitizers, gratis, and thank the guest for his/her courage in traveling.   That’s the smart move.