Delta and American now requiring all passengers to wear face masks

Today, Delta and America Airlines announced that they will be requiring all passengers to wear face coverings or masks on all flights starting on May 4 and May 11, respectively.  Both carriers are somewhat late to the game as Frontier and JetBlue already have such requirements, though legacy carriers Southwest and United have yet to jump on the face mask bandwagon.


Earlier in the week, Delta and American also announced that all flight crew will be require to wear face masks, and masks and sanitizing wipes would be provided to passengers as available.  Delta is taking it a step further by also requiring masks in the following locations:
  • check-in lobby
  • across Delta touchpoints
  • Delta Sky Clubs
  • boarding gate areas
  • jet bridges
  • on board the aircraft for the duration of the flight – except during meal service

Delta selling no more than 60% of seats on any given flight

In an effort to increase social distancing, Delta also announced today that they will sell no more than 60% of seats on any given flight through June 30th.  Last week, United had us all excited when they announced that they were blocking all middle seats.  However, it ended up being a scam as United would still open up and "unblock" those middle seats after all the other seats are sold.  But in this instance, Delta is actually leading the way by declaring a plane full and no longer selling any seats period after 60% of the seats are sold.


I'll have to actually hand it to Delta for this one, especially since a carrier needs to sell at least 75% of their seats just to break even financially.  Delta was also the first carrier to lead the way in extending elite status and implementing a rigorous and thorough cleaning process for their planes.


Bottom line

It's good to see more and more airlines adopt preventative measures to help control the transmission of COVID-19.  It was just 6 weeks ago when American Airlines disciplined a flight attendant for wearing a face mask in flight, which was banned for flight crew at the time.  But now, everyone will be wearing masks, which should hopefully help in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in-flight.  However, as passenger traffic has dropped by 93% over the past month, it may be a while before we see people willing to return to the skies even with all the preventative measures.

From all of us at Flying for Fitness, please stay healthy during this trying time.  We hope you enjoyed this post.  Please consider visiting one of our sponsors by clicking on the advertisements.  Our sponsors pay us for customer visits and help us to keep the lights on.  Thanks!



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