{"id":196068,"date":"2021-03-06T16:18:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T13:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/im-outraged-by-uniteds-covid-policy-after-a-jam-packed-flight\/"},"modified":"2021-03-06T16:18:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T13:18:58","slug":"im-outraged-by-uniteds-covid-policy-after-a-jam-packed-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/im-outraged-by-uniteds-covid-policy-after-a-jam-packed-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"#I’m outraged by United’s COVID policy after a jam-packed flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#I’m outraged by United’s COVID policy after a jam-packed flight<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

I knew going on vacation during a pandemic wasn\u2019t the smartest thing to do. I risked coming into close contact with strangers on TSA lines and baggage carousels. I understood Florida restaurants could be overcrowded and under-regulated, the golf courses lawless, the pools too populated, the casinos virtual coronavirus petri dishes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t realize was how a greedy airline would exponentially increase my risk of dying from COVID-19, with the full blessing of my government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had originally booked a vacation to a Caribbean beach and golf resort. The Bahamian government seemed to be effectively mitigating risk by having all travel<\/a>ers produce a negative COVID test result before flying there, and get tested again upon arrival at the resort. But the CDC still listed the country as a Level 3 risk \u2014 nonessential travel not recommended \u2014 so I canceled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was always Florida, just left of the Bahamas and with fewer conch fritters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The CDC and FAA had little to say about air travel to the Sunshine State; no negative test results or even temperature-taking were required. Just sign an easy form on your phone saying you don\u2019t have symptoms, promise to social<\/a> distance and to quarantine once you\u2019re back, yadda yadda. The complete lack of urgency was almost comforting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But clues that the skies would not be so friendly began arriving in text messages from the airline saying it expected a \u201cfuller flight\u201d and that I could change to \u201cother flight options\u201d at no extra charge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"While
The CDC and FAA have little to say about domestic air travel right now, despite the ongoing pandemic.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The airline text didn\u2019t actually point to, or give data on, these less-crowded flights. And I would have to cancel my weekend flights to presumably book a midweek nighttime route. I\u2019m sure people back at the hedge fund wouldn\u2019t mind me taking a few extra days with no notice. If I worked at a hedge fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So onward I marched through Newark-Liberty\u2019s Terminal C.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The waiting area was my first warning to turn back. No chairs were roped off for social distancing and my friend was immediately asked by an older woman if she could sit next to him. Nice that she was polite, but couldn\u2019t Typhoid Mary see the row of empty seats across the way?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Common sense eroded further once we boarded the Embraer aircraft, with its 24 rows of four seats, two on each side of a center aisle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Every seat was filled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

App<\/a>arently, six feet of social distancing is a foreign concept in the deadly skies. You had people sitting, at most, two feet in front of you, two feet in back of you and one person inches to the side of you. You would have had more room on a rush-hour rickshaw in downtown Mumbai.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In New York City right now, you can\u2019t stand at a bar, and restaurants must operate at only 35 percent of capacity. Madison Square Garden, with its 150-foot-high rafters, can fill only 10 percent of its seats \u2014 and every fan must have proof of a negative COVID test. Even cavernous outdoor stadiums are being held to a 10-percent (or less) limit right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in this flying aluminum beer can, where non-screened passengers would be breathing the same communal air for three hours, seemingly not a thought was given to cutting capacity. With a plane half full, they could have alternated rows of empty seats and doubled the space between passengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019ve been living in Cuomo-land too long, but I was stunned to learn the government allows this. It\u2019s every airline for themselves. A few have limited capacity. But many, like United, fully book flights. I understand the airlines are bleeding money and need customers. I also know they are about to get another $14 billion in taxpayer cash in the latest COVID bill, their third bailout in a year. They can afford to fly with fewer fannies in the seats for a little while longer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"While
While arenas like Madison Square Garden only allows 10 percent capacity, there are no such restrictions on airports.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

United says blocking off seats is only a \u201cpublic relations strategy \u2014 not a safety strategy,\u201d and it is instead focused on enforcing mask-wearing and disinfecting planes with \u201chospital-grade\u201d cleaners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t improve passengers\u2019 peace of mind. We sat in our casket-like seats, afraid to move about the cabin, scared to cough, terrified to hear a sneeze, and eyeing each other suspiciously. Is that girl\u2019s mask slipping under her nostrils? The guy with the goatee doesn\u2019t seem to have a proper seal. You could practically hear the Xanax bottles popping.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The good news<\/a> is that most commercial jets have pretty good air filtering and circulation systems. Powerful fans and high-efficiency particulate absorbing (HEPA) filters \u201care 99.9 percent effective\u201d in removing particulate contaminants such as COVID-19, experts say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bad news: That filter won\u2019t do much when Mike from Massapequa sneezes, his sagging Metallica mask failing to catch all of the 30,000 droplets \u2014 potentially carrying 200 million virus particles, traveling at 200 mph \u2014 from his nose to your neck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Paul McPolin is The Post\u2019s deputy Sunday editor, and is known to travel only as far as his Super Bowl pool winnings will take him. After vacation, he finally got his second vaccine shot.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#I’m outraged by United’s COVID policy after a jam-packed flight” I knew going on vacation during a pandemic wasn\u2019t the smartest thing to do. I risked coming into close contact with strangers on TSA lines and baggage carousels. I understood Florida restaurants could be overcrowded and under-regulated, the golf courses lawless, the pools too populated,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":196069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/united-airlines.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[96516,70996,70908,71812,1545,4947,77895,70997],"class_list":["post-196068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-6-21","tag-air-travel","tag-airlines","tag-airplanes","tag-coronavirus","tag-opinion","tag-travel-restrictions","tag-united-airlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}