After months of mostly staying home and working from my home office, we took a family vacation during the last week of June and the first couple of days of July. The idea was to fly to Las Vegas and use that as our jumping off point to visit the national parks of Utah.
The flight to Las Vegas on Alaska Airlines was cancelled and we were booked onto a flight four hours later. This was done weeks in advance. Alaska is cancelling most of their flights and consolidating the few passengers they have onto a few remaining flights in order to get the loads up. Still, the flight down wasn’t crowded and social distancing was possible. Everyone wore masks but we still all breathed that recycled air.
The national parks are mostly open but there were many parts of the parks that were not open. In other places, the size of the crowds was limited, making many attractions unavailable. Mask use indoors was pretty good but outdoors most people did not wear masks but they kept their distance.
The hotels we stayed in had limited their services. Some were not cleaning the rooms daily; only on turnover. While most hotels were providing complimentary morning breakfast, it was a “sack breakfast,” which one simply picked up and took with them. The first morning of this reduced service resulted in a new culinary low. We were each given a breakfast consisting of a small bottle of water, an orange and a “breakfast corndog.” A breakfast corndog looks like a regular corndog, but instead of the hot dog on a stick, it has a sausage. The sausage is coated with dough, like a regular corndog, but the consistency of the dough is much like a doughnut. So, a sausage coated in doughnut dough on a stick. It was every bit as bad as it sounds.
On the Las Vegas Strip, the casinos were doing a great job of enforcing masks for everyone. The big lighted signs on the Strip stressed masking and everyone indoors was complying.
So far, so good. The flight back was the lowlight of the trip. Alaska Airlines again cancelled flights in an effort to consolidate the loads. They switched us from an Alaska flight to a Horizon flight to a Sun West flight, which meant a much smaller plane. And while the online seating chart showed an X in every row, indicating empty seats for social distancing, that wasn’t what happened. On board, every seat was full. They did announce that anyone not comfortable sitting next to a stranger could ask to be rebooked. The next day. They also cut back the service with no food or alcohol served, all in the name of safety. It sure looked to me that Covid is being used as a ruse to save money anywhere they can.
The lesson in this for me was simple. I will not fly again until I’m vaccinated. My perception, as I sat on that plane with my shoulder touching the stranger in the next seat, breathing the recycled air for over two hours, in my mask with an imperfect fit, was that air travel is too dangerous under the current circumstances.
No sporting events, no concerts, no big meetings and now no flying until there is a vaccine. That’s the decision I’ve made.
Alaska Airlines made money on that flight, but long-term they are going to discourage discretionary travel by people like me. If Alaska Airlines, and I suspect the others, are going to show this sort of reckless disregard for their customers’ health, then I won’t be a customer again until I’ve been vaccinated.
No comments yet.