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United redefines “cancelled”
The current travel crisis has certainly bought out the best and mainly worst in many airlines and travel companies. If you thought you had seen United’s low point when it was all over social media dragging a doctor off ones of its aircraft, we may have a new contender!
I had previously covered that despite many US airlines trying to dodge giving out refunds on cancelled flights, the US Department of transport had confirmed that airlines MUST refund customers if they cancel their flights.
You can almost see the moment when a United Executive has a Blackadder moment and comes up with “A Cunning Plan”. “Hey, what about if we just changed what a cancelled flight actually is? Then we don’t have to refund them.”
Yes, you heard it right, United are trying to claim that when they cancel a flight, it’s not actually cancelled, just “removed”.
Here in United speak is the new customer cancelled flight dictionary:
Schedule change: A flight is removed from our schedule, but the customer can be accommodated within 6 hours.
Significant Schedule Change: A flight is removed, and a customer cannot be accommodated with an impact of 6+ hours.
Cancellation: A flight is removed, and we cannot accommodate the customer.
If we remove a flight from our schedule and can accommodate the customer with another flight within 6 hours, that is not considered a cancellation.
A cancellation is not based on flight number or tail number, but on the ability to provide transportation to our customer without significant delay.
This is such a blatant move by United to deny customers a refund that they are entitled to, that I hope the US DOT comes down on them hard. Let’s hope this does not give other airlines ideas….
HT: OMAAT
Vienna airport lets you bypass quarantine
One of the issues that will need to be overcome if people are to return to travel, is needing a 14-day quarantine on arrival in your destination. By the time you had completed that it would be time to go home again. Emirates had already announced that they would be testing passengers before they travel to some destinations with a rapid test for COVID. Results are typically ready within 10 minutes. Vienna is now following suit and allowing passengers to be tested for COVID before they enter Austria. The tests are not foolproof as you could get a false positive very early on in picking it up, but it will still catch the vast majority of cases.
The test at Vienna costs €190, and is carried out in a laboratory actually at Vienna Airport. Results take around 2-3 hours. If you are found to be negative for COVID, you get a medical certificate which means you do not have to self-isolate for 14 days on arrival into the country.
Currently, you have to present a medical certificate not more than four days old showing a negative COVID result, or go into a 14-day quarantine.
If we can ramp up the testing capacity everywhere, I would personally be more than happy to take a test to travel by plane or enter a country. Yes, it is not 100% foolproof, but it would make me feel far safer than everyone wearing masks.
