Fear and Traveling

From Live and Let’s Fly:

In the years to come, we will only begin to understand the devastation our overreaction to the pandemic inflicted upon the most vulnerable among us: the children who were kept out of school, the elderly and hospital patients who were separated from loved ones and made to endure pain alone, and those who were forced to live in isolation for a “public emergency” that still has not ended.

We will return to “normal” because we want to return to normal. That should actually unite us, even if we disagree on how fast it should be. The last two years taught us the amazing spirit of human ingenuity that so quickly developed a vaccine. It also taught us that we need one another and those who have been at the forefront of rolling back restrictions cannot simply be dismissed as selfish miscreants, but humans who recognize our need for one another in every area of life.

I don’t disagree that we need to start making moves to return to normal, but I don’t think the new normal will be anything like it was 3 years ago. At the same time it’s a bit of a cop-out to state that “we should want to return to normal” but that it can be over a timeline that we can disagree on. I don’t know of anyone in the United States who really wants to keep things as they are. Even in the article quoted it seems like the author is more concerned about the speed of the return to normal rather than what normal means.

Majestic Cafe

As someone who has lost a family member to COVID-19 (who caught it at another family event) the cost of normal seems too high. Would I love to go out and eat at restaurants or travel freely around the world again? Sure. Is it worth the loss of another family member? Absolutely not. People are tired of being cooped up or limiting their interactions due to COVID but a lot of that is because there is a real risk. We don’t fully understand the impact that the disease has on young children or even healthy adults. We don’t know what long COVID will mean for people who are still struggling from a disease they caught months ago. But sure, let’s just act like none of that is happening and get back to normal.

Also, the use of quotes in the above post carry a tinge of sarcasm. Is 900k+ dead in the United States not a public emergency? Is it only a real problem if we see death in the streets?

Honestly, I think the return to normal is a choice that each person is going to have to make for themselves. I know people who are traveling now and following all of the country protocols of the places they visit. I also know people who are immunocompromised and are staying home for their own safety. I don’t think there is some simple formula we can apply as a society and say “we’re back to what we were” overnight. There is a calculus that people are having to work out for themselves on what they are comfortable with and when.

As far as masks on airplanes and in airports, I’m fine with it; Every airport I’ve visited in the last year or so have been jam packed with people. I would rather the United States end the mandatory testing to enter the country or at least remove it for vaccinated people. I am not sure the policy is actually helping us keep COVID at bay but it is certainly putting a financial burden on people who do test positive after being overseas. For me, I am looking for international travel later in 2022. I hope by then we’ll be at a place where COVID is less prevalent and more people have had the opportunity for vaccination.

Is United’s additional Thanksgiving capacity irresponsible?

United will be adding 1,400 flights for the week of Thanksgiving and plans to use larger aircraft on some flights. From that same Bloomberg article –

Half of its Thanksgiving customers are buying tickets less than 30 days before the holiday, up from about 40% last year, United said. The airline will monitor bookings “in real-time to swap in larger aircraft when needed to accommodate last-minute demand.”

It seems a bit tone deaf for United to add all of this capacity for a holiday week. Yes, they need revenue but at the same time they are enabling behavior that will unfortunately lead to more Covid-19 infections. More people in airports, more people on planes (where Covid can and does spread), and people in their loved one’s homes in close contact. This is amid the U.S. setting new daily records when it comes to coronavirus cases.

United is a business and they are looking out for themselves but their disregard for public health in the name of money is a bad idea right now. I would hope that CEO Scott Kirby would take a moment to think about the company’s actions and the impact they will have on lives across the country.

Something doesn’t add up with this unaccompanied minor story

United at Newark
There is a story coming out today on a number of different news sites stating that United put a 14-year-old passenger on the wrong connecting flight. He was set to go to Stockholm on SAS but ended up on a Eurowings flight to Düsseldorf. Those two flights board next to each other and the gate agents are the same contract staff for both airlines

However, when I read through them, something does not add up.

From the Yahoo News! story:

A parent is blaming “the idiots” at United Airlines for putting his 14-year-old son on the wrong international flight, which would have taken him to Germany, instead of his intended destination, Sweden.

The young boy, Anton Berg, flew as an “unaccompanied minor” on June 30 with United Airlines from Raleigh, Durham, N.C. to Newark, N.J. From there, his connecting flight was supposed to take him directly to his destination, Stockholm, with Scandinavian Airlines, but he got on a flight to Dusseldorf, operated by Eurowings, instead.

So a 14-year-old traveling alone as an unaccompanied minor was put on the wrong connecting flight. Per the same article, United has apologized:

United Airlines has since refunded the $150 fee charged for directing the unaccompanied minor. In a statement provided to Yahoo Lifestyle, a representative said that the airline has “been in frequent contact with the young man’s family to confirm his safety and to apologize for this issue.”

What doesn’t add up is that the story and United’s unaccompanied minor policy don’t match. Add on top of that, the child was connecting onto a partner flight that was being serviced by a contract set of agents and things really get complicated.

From United’s website:

Our unaccompanied minor service is for children who are 5-14 years old and traveling without a parent, legal guardian or someone who is at least 18 years old. These young travelers also need to follow certain requirements for their safety:

  • Unaccompanied minors can only travel on nonstop United or United Express® flights. They can’t use our unaccompanied minor service on codeshare flights and other flights operated by our partner airlines.
  • United does not offer unaccompanied minor service connecting to or from other airlines’ flights.
  • Children younger than 5 can’t travel as unaccompanied minors, even if they’re flying with an older unaccompanied child.
  • Unaccompanied minor service is not available for children older than 14. Young adults ages 15 to 17 can travel alone on any United- or United Express®-operated flight.
  • It costs $150 each way for every two children traveling using the unaccompanied minor service.

The unaccompanied minor “service” is really a fee to make sure that your child makes it from your care to the care of whoever is picking them up from their destination. It is not an escort/babysitting service making sure your kid gets on the correct flight. In this particular case, it sounds like the parents skirted the rules of the program to try and get United to connect their son onto an SAS flight, which is not permitted for an unaccompanied minor (it says so directly in the policy). In fact, part of the reason the airlines don’t offer connections anymore is exactly this scenario, a potentially lost child somewhere in the process.

Once the minor was in the care of the contract agents for SAS and Eurowings, there was another breakdown where it was not understood what flight the child should be on. He was inadvertently directed to the Eurowings flight by their staff, not United’s.

The whole story comes down to the parents trying to be slick and skirt the unaccompanied minor rules and having it backfire. Rather than just roll with the punches they blame the airlines (and really focus on the wrong one in my opinion). The contract staff for the two European carriers screwed up and they need to fix whatever flaw they have that let them issue a boarding pass for the wrong flight.

When a trip goes sideways

A couple of weeks ago I was on my way to Taipei and Hangzhou with Fozz. The goal was to fly United’s last flight between Hangzhou and San Francisco. To do that, we planned to spend a day in Taipei first then head to Hangzhou, where we could transit without visa for another full day before flying back to the US.


On Friday the 13th (very appropriate) I woke up at 7am to catch my Portland-San Francisco flight and saw we were delayed by 55 minutes. No big deal, I had almost two hours to connect. The Santa Rosa wildfires had caused issues the day before as I returned from Las Vegas via San Francisco as well and I figured everything would be delayed. When I got to the airport the delay was 1.5 hours and I decided to talk to one of the gate agents about my options. She stated that there was an EVA flight to Taipei that left at 5:50pm that I would still have plenty of time for so she “protected” me on it, leaving my original United flight in the record should I get to San Francisco in time to make that flight.

By the time I boarded the plane in Portland, our flight was 2.5 hours delayed and I knew there was no way I would make my original connection but I was confident in making the EVA flight and stayed on the plane. Landing in San Francisco was uneventful and as I chatted with Fozz on the phone, the plane to Taipei was still at the gate with the door open. I might just make it! But it wasn’t to be. I arrived at the gate only to be sternly told that they were not taking anymore passengers. As I was told this, another person who was connecting was allowed to board. The only thing I can figure is that they had spoken to her previously or she was a standby passenger.

I still was not stressed, as I had an EVA flight confirmed, so I went to look for an EVA agent who could get me a boarding pass. Unfortunately, the EVA gate did not yet have an agent present and there was no one at the transfer desk. I also learned that both EVA’s and Singapore’s lounges at SFO had recently closed to make room for United’s new Polaris lounge. This left me in a position where my only option was to exit security and go to EVA’s ticket counter.

The agents at the EVA counter were very friendly and politely told me that they had no ticket for me and that I would need to talk to United to have them send the ticket over again. 45 minutes later and I was speaking with a United ticket agent who told me that the Portland agent should not have reissued the ticket the way she did and that it had been rejected by EVA. Due to the fires everything was full the next day but during this time Fozz had texted me to say that his plane was returning to the gate. The thought popped into my head that I might just be able to get back on that flight…

An aside, I still do not know why the United ticket agent at SFO did not offer to reissue a coach ticket on EVA. The original ticket was coach that was upgraded via a GPU, so my expectation was that she would at least offer coach on EVA. Maybe EVA was sold out in the back cabin due to the fires and misconnects?

Anyway, I went back through security using my original SFO-Taipei boarding pass and met Fozz at the gate. We asked an agent to relist me for the flight and she told us she could only do it after they had boarded, so we waited.

To make a long story short, the offer was to put me in coach in a middle seat (rather than downgrade the passenger they had upgraded into my seat) or to perform a carry over/carry back, essentially a trip-in-vain. At this point I was super tired and decided to just head back to Portland. Fozz was in agreement and decided to trip-in-vain as well.


I eventually made it back to Portland at midnight after dealing with multiple agents to get the tickets properly notated and reissued. It was a mess getting home, but in my mind, was the right decision. The Taipei flight landed nearly six hours late and would have completely burned our time in the city as we would have spent most of that getting to the hotel and back to the airport. I was bummed to miss the last Hangzhou-San Francisco flight, but at least I got an interesting blog post out of it.

If you’d like to hear more, Fozz and I recorded a Dots, Lines and Destinations episode about it.

Couple Removed from United Flight (or a non-story)

From KHOU (autoplaying video):

Michael Hohl, the groom, said he and his fiancé, Amber Maxwell, were the last to board the plane.

According to Hohl, they noticed a man was spread across their row napping when they approached their seats, 24 B and C.

Not wanting to wake the man, Hohl said they decided to sit a three rows up in seats 21 B and C. He said they didn’t think it would matter because the flight was half full with multiple empty rows.

21 B and C are exit row seats on United planes and considered Economy Plus because of the extra legroom.

After sitting, Hohl said a flight attendant approached and asked if they were in their ticketed seats. The couple explained they weren’t and asked if they could get an upgrade, but instead they were told they needed to return to their assigned seats.

So then they tried to finagle their way into the seats by asking for the upgrade.

“I think customer service and the airlines has gone real downhill,” said Hohl. “The way United Airlines handled this was really absurd.”

So the couple could have simply asked the flight attendants to ask the man in their row to sit up (which he would have been required to do for takeoff anyway), but they opted to seat themselves in a better seat.

To sum it all up, this is a non-story.

2017 – Of Goals and Hopes

Happy New Year!

I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions but as we enter 2017 I did want to share some goals I have for this year. Things that I hope to accomplish and hopes I want to strive for.

  • Take more photos. I was looking through my 2016 albums and realized that I did not take nearly enough photos, so I am challenging myself with a goal of taking at least one photo a day and posting it on my Flickr page. I posted the image for January 1 below.
  • Travel more. My travel in 2016 really fell off for a number of reasons but I would like to get back to seeing the world. A few of my destination goals in 2017 are the Balkans, Georgia, Namibia, Laos, Vietnam, and Japan.
  • Read more. I have let reading really fall by the wayside over the last few years but my goal in 2017 is to read 50 books. I will be tracking my progress using Goodreads’ challenge tracker.
  • Donate more. We have a few causes that we love helping and it is a hope and goal of mine in 2017 that we pursue those more closely both monetarily and with our time. I also want to be a source of encouragement for others to participate and contribute in charity and caring for those who are less fortunate.

So, those are my goals for 2017. I hope to post some of the photography work here, but definitely keep me honest via that Flickr page. Not seeing a new photo in a while? Send me a note on Twitter. What are your hopes and goals for 2017?

Seasonal Route Cuts at United

Recently I waslooking for a ticket to Hamburg in late January and had a found a decent deal on United via Newark. Today I went back to book it and found that the non-stop Newark-Hamburg flight was no longer being offered. Turns out, United is seasonally cutting a few routes, including Houston-Munich and Newark-Hamburg. The cuts will run between January 8 and May 5, 2017. Confirmation of these cuts was made by the United Twitter team.

The transatlantic market must be much softer than the airlines are letting on. Both Newark-Hamburg and Houston-Munich were year round options for the last few years. Has the economy dipped so much so that they just aren’t selling as well? For me it is an inconvenience. I really wanted to fly the route this January but it looks like I will have to wait until summer to get that cool line.

If you are booked on one of these flights during the listed dates you will likely no longer see the affected segments in your reservation but the automatic rebooking engine should list a new option soon. If you are unhappy with what you are rebooked on, give United a call with options that you find acceptable.

New Delta Airlines Uniforms

Delta Airlines announced that they would be rolling out new uniforms for 60,000 frontline employees. The new uniforms are for check-in and gate agents, flight attendants, and below the wing employees such as cargo and ramp staff.

Delta Airlines New Uniforms 2

New Delta Uniforms 1

The uniforms have been described as “high class” and “elegant” by Delta and reporters. And yes, the uniforms are a very nice change, but the hype around them seems a little over the top. I think it gets to me because it simply seems like a distraction from the fact that travel on U.S. airlines in economy has become a rather bleak affair. It is an illusion of fancy in an industry that has become anything but; Basic economy fares and less legroom has become the norm. Yes, I know, fare prices are on the decline domestically, but that comes with the added expense of the ancillary fares, which airlines are attempting to increase.

I think the fancy new uniforms speak to a larger trend in modern consumerism. I don’t mean to go existential but it feels like we’re giving up what matters for what looks good, not just in airplane amenities but in everyday life. Maybe it is time to take a step back and realize that the substance of what we enjoy and cherish is more important than the window dressing.

The $21,000 Airplane Seat

By now I am sure you have seen Casey Neistat’s video documenting his recent experience in Emirates First Class after an upgrade. If you haven’t, I have embedded the video below.

I appreciate that Casey shared the experience via his vlog. Showering at 35,000 feet is one of the coolest features of first class Emirates (and now Etihad). That said, the episode was a little click-baity. The headline is definitely attention grabbing but what is the reality of people paying $21,000 for a first class ticket? The general assumption is that high level executives and the independently wealthy are the ones filling the best seats on the planes and while that might occasionally be the case, for the most part, people are not paying full price.

Airlines can price the first class cabin at whatever they want, the higher the price, the more of an exclusive feel. Behind the scenes though, airlines are discounting those seats for companies that have large corporate contracts and releasing the seats for rewards or upgrades. So yes, there might be a few people out there who actually pay full price for first class, but the reality is that a lot are paying far below the published price you will find on a website.

The video is definitely a great look at Emirates’ first class product and all of its features. Casey didn’t really know why he was upgraded and I wonder if it had something to do with his Boosted Board being confiscated by security at the Sydney Airport.

Edit, not too long after posting this story, Cynthia Drescher clued me in on a great theory of why Casey was upgraded:

Airline Service Returning to Klamath Falls?

According to U.S. Representative Walden’s website, the House has unanimously approved the Treating Small Airports with Fairness Act. The act name is kind of cheesy but essentially it would bring back TSA screening to small airports that lost service at the beginning of 2013 and has a commitment from an airline for service.

The TSA Fairness Act would require the TSA to restore screening services to any airport that lost service after January 1, 2013 and that has a guarantee from a commercial airline to resume service within one year. There are currently at least six airports nationwide that have commercial airlines seeking to resume flights after undergoing a temporary gap in service, but are being denied TSA security screening and personnel. Instead, the agency directed the airports to allow passengers to fly unscreened to their next destination, and undergo screening there.

Klamath Falls is one of the closest airports to Crater Lake so this change will make it easier for tourists to make it to that lovely attraction, not to mention the rest of southern Oregon. If the act passes in the Senate the airline that has already been tapped to operate the Portland-Klamath Falls service would be PenAir, who has already started a number of routes out of Portland and is partners with Alaska Airlines.

There is no date for when the Senate would vote on the legislation, but I will definitely be on the look out for its passing.