Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Plane Travel During Covid-19

Last week I was travelling from Durham, North Carolina to Oakland, California, via Nashville, Tennessee. These are my observations: 

Durham Airport 

Highly recommended that all people (passengers, airline crew, and airport workers) wear a mask and a glove at the airport. Only about 20% of the passengers wore a mask. All airline crew wore a mask. All airport workers wore a mask and gloves. No passenger, except one idiot, wore gloves. That was me. 

Nashville Airport

Same story as in Durham Airport. 

Inside the Aircraft 

All passengers were seated either in the window seat or aisle seat. Middle seats were kept vacant. Flight Stewards were lucky. During this Covid stuff, passengers will not be served any coffee or tea or soft drinks or alcohol or food. Only purified drinking water. However, the airline I traveled served us snacks along with water. 

Flying time Durham to Nashville is one hour and ten minutes. Nashville to Oakland is 4 hours and 25 minutes. Boring flights. No one spoke to other passengers. 

Oakland Airport 

Highly recommended that all people (passengers, airline crew, and airport workers) wear a mask and a glove at the airport. Everyone was wearing a mask. No one except airport workers wore gloves. 

Taking Advantage of the Situation 

Airlines. Stopped providing coffee, tea, and soft drinks. But did not reduce the price. 

Restaurants. There is an Indian restaurant in our area. Their lunch package includes rice, naan, 2 side dishes (veg or non veg), salad, sweet, raita, and pickle. I went there yesterday to take out a lunch package. Price is the same. But no salad, sweet, raita, and pickle. I asked the guy why these items were not included. He said corona virus. I asked him the connection between these 4 and the corona virus. He did not reply. Only the Indian smile. 

Charity scam. Got couple of calls for donations. Some total stranger, out of the blue, asking for money over the phone? No way.

Hoarding,  50% of the shelves in any departmental store are empty.