US to Require Vaccines for Most Airline Employees, Double Fines for Maskless Travelers
President Biden was busy yesterday announcing a slew of changes to vaccine and mask policies that will impact airline employees and passengers, assuming the inevitable legal challenges do not succeed.
The President announced that all US companies with more than 100 employees will be required to either mandate vaccines or have weekly testing for unvaccinated employees. That will impact every airline in the US except for all those fake startup airlines that are really just one person in a garage with a dream.
Further, companies that are government contractors will be required to mandate vaccines and will not have the testing option available. It’s unclear if airlines that have government fares are considered government contractors, but there are other agreements like those for transportation of prisoners or deportees that would certainly qualify. In other words, you can expect vaccine mandates to be required at many airlines if they want to stay on the feds’ gravy train.
On the passenger side, TSA is getting tough with mask mandate violators. Fines will now double for those who refuse to wear masks on airplanes to a range of $500 to $3,000 depending upon if it’s your first offense or not and if you needed to be handcuffed or if the zip-ties were enough.
ITA Gets the OK to Take Over for Alitalia
Those who are concerned about whether Alitalia will actually have a functioning replacement on October 15 — in other words, anyone with a flight booked – can breathe a little easier today. The European Commission has now ruled that ITA, which will start flying right after Alitalia shuts down, is actually a different airline from Alitalia.
Why do you care if it’s a different airline? Well, that determination was required in order for the new company to be able to avoid having to take on Alitalia’s crushing debts. It can now start as a new carrier free from all those shackles, and that means if you bought a ticket on the airline, it will probably, actually be valid for a flight, assuming there are no other snags to derail this plan.
The EC says that ITA can launch with some aircraft from Alitalia and some maintenance/ground handling functions brought over. It can also bid on the Alitalia brand at auction, but that’s about it.
We at Cranky will be taking donations to outbid ITA for the brand name so we can assign it to our new chain of fast casual Italian restaurants with its lovable mascot, Al Italia. We will also be looking to take over Alitalia’s MilleMiglia loyalty program — which ITA is prohibited from buying — so we can offer free breadsticks to our most important customers.
TSA Makes Seattle Checkpoint Reservation System Permanent
The TSA has seen such success with the SEA Spot Saver checkpoint reservation system that it has decided to make the program permanent. Travelers will now be able to make appointments for time slots to get a full-body massage at TSA checkpoints for all future flights, if they so desire.
Alaska Airlines announced that it has had more than 125,000 travelers use the program between when it started in early May and the end of August. The top four destinations for those who used the program were Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego… and Columbus. The first three make sense because of the high frequency and sheer number of passengers. Columbus, however, was probably successful because people mistakenly thought they were making a reservation for dinner at a Bob Evans.
Travelers going through security between 4am and 12pm — aka, “the busy time” — can now book appointments up to 72 hours before departure instead of just 24 hours out, getting assigned a 15 minute slot after providing their departure flight details. Those with TSA Precheck beware… this program does not combine with Precheck so you’ll have to take your shoes off like all the other riff-raff if you want to use it.
- American‘s head of the AAdvantage loyalty program is not feeling so loyal… he’s retiring from the airline.
- Ariana Afghan — probably the world’s most difficult airline to run — is hoping to restart international flights to Delhi later this month.
- Avianca says it’s possible its stock will be worthless when it comes out of bankruptcy. That’s generally how this works, so no surprises there.
- Azul will launch flights with its first Embraer E195-E2 in December between Campinas and Punta del Este in Uruguay.
- Cape Air 2702 ran off the runway and crashed into trees yesterday in Provincetown. There were no fatalities.
- Delta says that 20% of the unvaccinated employees at the company have now gotten the first jab in the two weeks since the airline announced it would heavily penalize those people who didn’t. This, of course, may be moot thanks to the new federal rules discussed above.
- Delta and LATAM have come to an agreement with Chile that will allow the airlines to move forward with their joint venture. It was Chile’s denial of the American/LATAM tie-up that led to the sinking of that agreement.
- Greater Bay — the new airline from Hong Kong — is likely to see its December start date slip now that Hong Kong has initiated a “private inquiry” into the airline.
- Gulf Air is going to start service to Tel Aviv on September 30, now that relations between Bahrain and Israel have been normalized.
- Japan Airlines is borrowing/issuing bonds for ~$2.7 billion to help it get through the pandemic.
- Jet Airways is facing all sorts of trouble in restarting, including having one of its 777s sold off. Odds of a relaunch are… decreasing.
- Nok Air is trying to reorganize and it’s not going well. Creditors are fighting over the right way forward, which we assume is to just shut the whole thing damn and stop burning money.
Why couldn’t the pasta get into his house?
Because he had gnocchi.