Southwest Halts Employee Contact Tracing
Southwest Airlines suspended its internal workplace contact tracing program for positive COVID-19 tests while it tries to weather the storm created by the increase in positive cases.
Southwest will now follow current CDC guidelines in which fully vaccinated people who have received their booster and always have their order ready when they get to the deli counter at the grocery store do not have to isolate following a close contract with someone who has the virus. People in that situation should get tested after five days as a precaution, wear a mask for ten days, and decline the sample slice from the deli counter employee – it’s ham, you know what it tastes like.
The carrier is also reducing its required isolation period for confirmed positive tests from ten to five days, provided the employee is symptom-free for 24 hours and doesn’t still try to pay at the grocery store with a written check.
Southwest canceled nearly 4,000 flights between December 31 and January 7, representing almost 15% of its schedule, most of which related to staff shortages caused by positive COVID-19 cases. The carrier hopes that this new, temporary guidance will help it right the ship both in the air and at the supermarket.
Qatar Wants More Than $600 Million from Airbus
Looking to get a taste of the real Italy, Lufthansa executives were seen at The Olive Garden in Times Square over the weekend working on their plan to try and buy up to a 40% stake in Alitalia ITA.
If successful, ITA would become a member of Lufthansa Group, and relieve Eurowings Discover’s role of being the new guy. Alfredo Altavilla, president of ITA, said that he was very interested in a Lufthansa takeover, which makes perfect sense considering he chose to join Delta, Air France, and KLM in SkyTeam like 15 minutes ago.
Italy is Lufthansa’s second-largest international market, behind just the United States. Air Dolomiti is currently a Lufthansa Group airline, but it’s a small, regional LCC that focuses on connecting Europe via Germany to parts of Italy and not on the Italian market itself. Adding ITA would also be addition by subtraction as it would take its biggest competitor in Italy away from rivals Air France/KLM.
Israel Reopens Borders to Tourists
Israel reopened its borders Sunday to tourists who are fully vaccinated or have fully recovered from COVID-19 or can prove a grandparent has an original hamantaschen recipe.
The country’s borders had been closed since November and forced the Israeli government to offer aid packages to El Al and other airlines to make up for lost revenue from the closure. Tourists entering Israel must show a negative test no more than 72 hours before departure and pass another test upon arrival. They then must be able to ask and answer The Four Questions.
The country does not have any medical exemptions for unvaccinated tourists, so if he’s considering a trip to Israel this spring, Novak Djokovic should probably choose somewhere else.
- Air Alsie is wet-leasing an E190 to Germany’s Lübeck Air.
- Alaska is cutting back on-board service to one beverage service in economy regardless of flight length through the end of January.
- American is delaying the launch of its 3x-weekly service between DFW and Tel Aviv to May. Also, but (most likely) unrelated, it’s now offering sustainable pajamas, whatever that means.
- Delta announced that Scott Laurence will join the airline next week as Vice President of Network Planning. Scott comes from JetBlue where he took on the DOJ as the leader on the Northeast Alliance. His first job at Delta will be to figure out what goes on at Concourse D in Atlanta and who actually flies out of there. His second job will be to destroy his former airline in its New York home.
- KLM will now add 0.5% of Sustainable Aviation Fuel for flights departing Amsterdam. Beginning Thursday, customers will have the option to purchase additional SAF for their flight. They’ll also have the option to cover the cost of on-board catering, post-flight cleaning services, and the salary of their gate agent.
- Qantas won’t be selling first class on its A380 service between Sydney and Los Angeles because
it can’t sell itit’ll use it to upgrade frequent fliers who purchased business class. - SAA acknowledged it’s in default on one of its aircraft in Zambia, which led to an attempted seizure of the aircraft, but the carrier is allegedly still in possession of the airplane.
- SKS Airways received its Air Service License from the Malaysian government.
- Virgin Atlantic customers saw their mileage totals reset to 0 today. It’s most likely an error and everyone’s mileage totals will be restored in a day or two — but there’s always a chance the carrier is “testing” to see if people notice on behalf of Delta.
- Virgin Australia is cutting back its schedule by about 25% through the end of February.
I just burnt my Hawaiian Pizza.
Should have used aloha temperature.