CDC Signals Some Cruising Could Return By Midsummer

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By Michael Higgins

East Coast Bureau

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Friday that Americans who have received an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine can travel safely within the United States.

As part of the updated travel policy, CDC officials said fully vaccinated tourists will no longer be required to get tested before or after travel unless they are required by the destination.

Vaccinated travelers have been deemed less likely to spread the disease by the latest scientific data, which caused the agency to determine they would also no longer be required to self-quarantine.

The CDC continues to recommend that Americans who have received a full coronavirus vaccine treatment follow the existing health and safety protocols in place, including wearing facial coverings, social distancing and washing hands more often.

“With millions of Americans getting vaccinated every day, it is important to update the public on the latest science about what fully vaccinated people can do safely, now including guidance on safe travel,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. “We continue to encourage every American to get vaccinated as soon as it’s their turn, so we can begin to safely take steps back to our everyday lives.”

“Vaccines can help us return to the things we love about life, so we encourage every American to get vaccinated as soon as they have the opportunity,” Walensky continued.

For travelers who have not received the COVID-19 vaccine or have not completed the two-shot process, the CDC recommends delaying travel due to the potential spread of the virus.

As for international travel, fully vaccinated people will not be required to get a COVID-19 test before travel unless it is required by the destination. The agency also said vaccinated travelers don’t need to self-quarantine after returning to the U.S., unless required by state or local governments.

Travelers arriving in the U.S. will still be required to present a negative COVID-19 test result before they board their flight and another three to five days after returning.

By Mary Johnson

Foreign Bureau

American Airlines announced expanded partnerships with airport authorities in Italy and coronavirus testing partner GoHealth Urgent Care to provide travelers with confidence when they’re ready to fly again.

The carrier first revealed passengers on flights to Milan and Rome from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City would be able to skip Italy’s mandatory quarantine period with proof of a negative COVID-19 test.

Once travelers arrive in Milan or Rome and take a second test at the airport producing a negative result, they will be able to maximize their time in Italy. 

American resumes daily service to Milan on April 4 and three-times-weekly service to Rome on May 8, with both flights operating on a Boeing 777-200.

“We’re proud to offer our customers additional options to ease travel as they begin planning their global trips once again,” American’s Chief Customer Officer Alison Taylor said. “We’ve worked closely with local authorities and testing providers to ensure we continue to provide world-class safety, confidence and comfort, and we look forward to welcoming our customers onboard soon.”

American also announced customers would have access to in-person testing at more than 150 local urgent care facilities or hospitals through GoHealth Urgent Care, starting on March 28.

As part of the collaboration GoHealth Urgent Care, travelers will have the option to receive rapid PCR or Rapid Molecular COVID-19 testing to ensure they’re meeting all travel restrictions in place at international and domestic destinations.

By Alice Richards

East Coast Bureau

United Airlines on Tuesday announced an ambitious new plan to recruit more pilots for what could be a worldwide pilot shortage in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

United, the only major U.S. airline to own its own flight school, began accepting applications to the United Aviate Academy as it embarks on a plan to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030, at least half of them women and people of color.

Backed by scholarship commitments from United Airlines and JPMorgan Chase, United Aviate Academy will create opportunities for thousands of students, including women and people of color, to pursue a career as a commercial airline pilot, one of the most lucrative careers in the industry.

In addition, for those United Aviate Academy students who may need additional financing, United has partnered with Sallie Mae to offer private student loans to ensure that no highly-qualified, highly-motivated, eligible applicants will be turned away solely because they can't afford to enroll.

"Over the next decade, United will train 5,000 pilots who will be guaranteed a job with United, after they complete the requirements of the Aviate program – and our plan is for half of them to be women and people of color," United CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement. "We're excited that JPMorgan Chase has agreed to support our work to diversify our pilot ranks and create new opportunities for thousands of women and people of color who want to pursue a career in aviation."

Both United and JPMorgan Chase have committed $1.2 million each to support women and people of color who are accepted to United Aviate Academy.

"We are proud to partner with United to support the Aviate Academy's mission to enable thousands to pursue their dream as a commercial airline pilot," said Ed Olebe, President of Chase Co-Brand Cards. "Investing in this program directly aligns with our efforts to advance racial equity by expanding career development opportunities and making tangible progress in a field where women and people of color are underrepresented."

By Eric Hanson

Foreign Bureau

Florida Gov. DeSantis’ lawsuit to force the federal government to allow cruising in the U.S. gained much attention and enthusiastic reactions from his supporters and some loyal cruisers. 

What did the cruise industry itself have to say about it?

Royal Caribbean Group’s response: “We are aware that there are many efforts underway at the state, federal and grassroots levels that can support us as we return to healthy and safe sailing from the United States. Vaccinations layered on top of the rigorous health and safety measures we are implementing enable us to create a safe environment for cruising. We strongly believe that the cruise industry can be part of President Biden’s stated goal for society to reopen by July 4.”

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings statement: “As a matter of company policy, we do not comment on third-party litigation. As we’ve outlined in our proposed plan to safely resume cruising, we look forward to partnering with the CDC to engage in meaningful discussions. We believe the time has come for cruising to resume from U.S. ports. Our proposed plan, including 100 percent vaccinations of guests and crew, universal testing and multi-layered health and safety protocols, is consistent with the CDC’s updated travel guidance.”

From Carnival Corp.: “We are aware of the lawsuit and share the sense of urgency of getting Americans back to work. Our focus is trying to work with the CDC on a plan to resume cruise operations this summer.”

Sounds like proof of COVID-19 vaccinations is a major part of the return of cruising in the U.S. – and elsewhere – as is working jointly with the CDC. Most cruise lines now starting offshore sailings are requiring proof of full vaccination from 100 percent of passengers and crew members.

However, DeSantis is opposed to vaccine passports and even issued an executive order opposing them. His ban on vaccine proof would apply to cruise ships, according to a story by NBC6 Miami.

Don’t forget that anyone can threaten a lawsuit or even proceed with filing one, as DeSantis officially did on April 8. But that doesn’t mean it has any merit.

“It’s a political stunt, and it’s not viable. DeSantis doesn’t care that it’s going to be laughed out of court. By the time it gets dismissed his base will have moved on,” Bob Jarvis, a constitutional law professor at Nova Southeastern University told the Miami Herald.

“I think it’s got negligible viability approaching zero,” Larry Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization’s center on global health law, told the Miami Herald. “Under no circumstance could I see a judge striking down a regulation that applies to cruise ships and the safety of its passengers because its passengers are going to be introducing infectious diseases back into the U.S. if they get infected on the ship. The U.S. has a very strong interest and power to stop that.”

Still, it's not hard to see what’s motivating DeSantis. He wants to be seen as doing whatever he can to help the cruise industry, which has been shut down for over a year, and all the workers who depend on it for their livelihood.

“To be clear, no federal law authorizes the CDC to indefinitely impose a nationwide shutdown of an entire industry,” DeSantis said in a press release. “This lawsuit is necessary to protect Floridians from the federal government’s overreach and resulting economic harm to our state.”

During the first six months of the shutdown, losses in Florida due to the cruise shutdown totaled $3.2 billion in economic activity, including 49,500 jobs paying $2.3 billion in wages, according to a September 2020 report from the Federal Maritime Commission cited by DeSantis. To date, over 6,000 former cruise industry employees have filed for state unemployment, and Florida’s seaports have suffered a decline in operating revenue of almost $300 million – a figure projected to increase to nearly $400 million in July 2021, according to statistics cited by the governor.

The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) said it is “grateful” for the DeSantis’ support and his efforts to restart cruising. “Tens of thousands of Floridians rely on cruising for their livelihoods, including longshoremen, taxi drivers, travel agents and tour operators, ports, and numerous suppliers and vendors that make the cruise industry work. Ultimately, CLIA and the entire cruise community — from longshoremen to ports to suppliers and vendors, to mayors of cruise ports, to travel agents and many other small businesses and independent business owners — remain focused on dialogue with the CDC and the administration to pursue a workable path to cruising by the beginning of July.”

By James Schlessinger

West Coast Bureau

Vaccination in the US has been aggressive considering the high numbers of transmission and deaths that the country was and still is going through. Now it looks like America’s travellers are booking flights for post-pandemic vacations which is a strong sign that U.S. airlines are ready for take-off, according to aviation consultant Mike Boyd.

“When you look at what they’re doing, I’m very confident that they’re going to get through this now. They’re going to have to grow back, but they’re going to get through this,” he told Yahoo Finance Live while cautioning that passengers may still be wary of travelling to locked-down locations.

“They’ve been afraid to get to New York City and find out it’s under quarantine, or LA is shut down, or things like that. When we get more confidence in the destination,  we’re going to see more people flying. But right now, no one wants to fly to a place where they can’t buy a hamburger,” said Boyd, the president of Boyd Group International, which provides analysis for airports and aviation businesses.

The data backs up Boyd’s contention that the airline industry is recovering. 

According to the Transportation Security Administration, more than 1 million people passed each day through the nation’s airports between March 11 and March 28. By March 28, that number was over 1.5 million. During that same period in 2020, the number fell from 1.7 million to 184,000, as the coronavirus shuttered much of the nation’s economy.

Of course, that’s lower than numbers in 2019, when the daily number of passengers fluctuated between 2.1 million and 2.6 million. Analysts are still encouraged by the numbers, though.

“U.S. airline trends appear encouraging as the bookings recovery (early March through present) is the strongest it has been so far in the pandemic at 70-80% of 2019 levels,” Raymond James Analyst Savanthi Syth told clients in her most recent note.

While U.S. domestic fares remain up to 20% lower than comparable fares in 2019, Syth pointed out that the average round-trip U.S. domestic fares for May to August have increased.

Airlines will start reporting their first-quarter earnings next month with Delta Air Lines kicking off the reports on April 15. At the JPMorgan Industrials Conference on March 15, Delta CEO Ed Bastian struck an optimistic tone.

“The real story for the quarter, you know, kicked in about five or six weeks ago when we started to see bookings pick up, and that coincided clearly with confidence in the marketplace, people starting to book their spring and summer plans,” the Delta CEO said.

Amid this confidence, airlines have begun expanding their flight schedules. United announced flights, starting in April, between New York and California as the airline launches new routes from JFK International Airport.

For its part, American Airlines has expanded its flights to South America and said last week it’s already paid off a $550 million loan it received last year from the U.S. government to get through the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The airline received the loan as part of the coronavirus aid package known as the CARES Act.

“This prepayment is a shining example of the importance of the CARES Act,” American CEO Doug Parker said in a statement. “Our industry was in danger of shutting down one year ago when the CARES Act was passed. This important legislation, including the $25 billion secured lending program for airlines, demonstrated that our leaders understood the challenges facing our economy, and their quick action stabilized our industry and kept our workforce intact.”

Southwest, managing an upturn in demand, made news Monday when it announced plans to buy 100 Boeing 737 Max jetliners with options to purchase an additional 155 737 Max aircraft over the next 10 years. The first 30 planes will be delivered in 2022 as part of a $10 billion investment to update Southwest’s fleet.

For his part, Boyd says the U.S. airline industry “is recovering very well because of its domestic traffic upturn. He points out that 31% of U.S. airport traffic is driven by international travel, which is coming back much slower than domestic.

“We’ve got an incredibly smart management, the rest of the world is going to be the thing we’re not going to be too sure about until we get some control over the COVID overseas,” Boyd said. While he predicts overall airline traffic will be down this year, he says airlines will make money by the end of 2022.

By Eric Hanson

Foreign Bureau

Carnival Corporation & plc addressed the possibility that Carnival Cruise Line, initially planning to stick with U.S. ports, might book homeports outside of the country.

Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Corp., said the April 2 guidance from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) was “not necessarily a workable or practical solution.”

“In terms of whether we would consider sailing or homeporting out of the Caribbean, Carnival is really America’s original cruise line,” he said. “Part of that is the drive-to market capability is access for people. We have 14 homeports in the U.S. and nobody else has anything that.”

He said he’d also prefer to see American ports working again, providing jobs for thousands.

“But if we’re unable to sail then obviously we will consider homeporting elsewhere,” Donald said.

During the quarterly call with financial analysts, Donald was asked if he set a drop-dead deadline at which time Carnival Cruise Line would use overseas homeports if the CDC didn’t allow Carnival to operate in the U.S.

“We don’t have an arbitrary date. I would say it’s sooner rather than later that we might have to announce some additional homeporting outside the U.S.,” Donald said. “We’re kind of holding back on that, but I think it will be sooner rather than later. We are very much focused on working with the CDC and the administration to come up with a solution that works for American workers and the American public. And I think we can. If we all continue to work together, we’ll figure it out.”

One positive sign came April 6 when the CDC first signaled some cruising could return with restrictions by mid-summer.

Donald also was asked when the entire fleets might be back in the water.

“In terms of the overall fleet, we are going to come back staggered, no matter what, and we will be bringing in a few ships of a brand at a time,” he said. 

“Hopefully, if we were to good to go and destinations were all up and running, and we have all the various itineraries, ideally we’d like to be able to have the fleet fully going by the end of this year and early next year. That’s our aspiration.”

Earlier in the call, Carnival cited huge growth in cruise bookings. The company said bookings for future cruises rose 90 percent in the first quarter of 2021, compared to the final quarter 2020.

Cumulative advanced bookings for the full-year 2022 “are ahead of a very strong 2019, despite minimal advertising or marketing.”

Donald noted that the six of the corporation’s brands have already resumed operations or announced plans to restart this summer with nine ships.

So far:

– AIDA resumed guest cruise operations in March in the Canary Islands.

– Costa expects to resume cruising in May to Italian ports.

– P&O Cruises (UK), Cunard and Princess Cruises will each offer a series of UK cruises this summer.

– Seabourn expects to resume guest cruise operations July 3 sailing from Greece.

– Holland America Line and Princess Cruises are offering land-based vacation options in Alaska through a combination of tours, lodging and sightseeing.

“Throughout the pause we have been positioning Carnival Corporation to return to serving guests an operationally stronger company than we were before,” Donald said. “With an exciting roster of six new, more efficient ships by December and with lower capacity from the exit of 19 less efficient ships, we expect to capitalize on pent-up demand and achieve significant cost improvement from the greater efficiency of our fleet, along with ongoing streamlining of shoreside operations.”

The company reported a U.S. GAAP net loss of $2 billion and an adjusted net loss of $2billion for the first quarter of 2021. However, bookings are soaring as more and more people are getting vaccinated and starting to feel safe to travel.

Total customer deposits as of Feb. 28, 2021, and Nov. 30, 2020, were $2.2 billion, the majority of which are future cruise credits. During the quarter, customer deposits on new bookings essentially offset the impact of refunds provided.

Carnival CFO David Bernstein said the company ended the first quarter with $11.5 billion in cash and short-term investments on the balance sheet.

“At this time, we believe we have enough liquidity to get us back to full operations, and we will be pursuing refinancing opportunities to reduce interest expense and extend maturities,” he said. “We have successfully identified and implemented actions to optimize our monthly cash burn rate and we will continue to do so.”

As the company continues to resume guest cruise operations, it expects to spend more to bring ships out of pause status, return crew members to its ships, and implement enhanced health and safety protocols.

The map features a color-coded map and a drop-down menu of more detailed restrictions and state-specific rules. 

Aiming to make deciding where to travel a bit easier, as COVID-19 continues to spark restrictions and rules for traveling around the United States, United Airlines created an interactive, color-coded map detailing everything travelers need to know ahead of planning a trip.

The map lists everything from whether or not entry into a state is allowed, potential quarantine measures, testing requirements, and even mask mandates for all 50 states and Washington D.C., the company shared with Travel + Leisure. Travelers can see if restaurants, tourist sites, or hotels are open and if there are any specific restrictions in place.

"We know it's a challenge to keep up with the ever-changing list of travel restrictions, policies and regulations so we are offering a simple, easy tool that helps customers decide where to travel next," Linda Jojo, the executive vice president for technology and chief digital officer, said in a statement. 

"By providing the most up-to-date information on the destinations we serve, customers can compare and shop for travel with greater confidence and help them find the destinations that best fit their preferences."

The map's color-coded feature and drop-down menu offer more detailed restrictions and state-specific rules.

Several states have implemented quarantine or testing measures for out-of-state visitors. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, for example, require travelers from dozens of states to self-isolate for two weeks when entering the tri-state area. Similarly, Hawaii requires visitors to quarantine and has pushed back its plan to welcome tourists again until at least October.

United’s new feature comes as the airline eliminated most change fees on domestic flights and committed to allowing all customers to fly same-day standby for free on both domestic and international flights. Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and Alaska Airlines then followed suit.

United isn’t alone in trying to inform passengers before hopping on a flight. Google Travel introduced a similar feature, linking to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Travel Health Notices.

By John Sandoval 

West Coast Bureau

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe passengers who have not been vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus should be barred from travelling on an aeroplane according to a new Reuters poll. Overall, 62 per cent of those polled said people should be vaccinated before being allowed to travel, with that number rising to 80 per cent amongst Democrat voters.

Reuters polled 1,005 people on Monday and Tuesday to gauge the American people’s current attitude to Coronavirus vaccines. 54 per cent of respondents now said they were “very interested” in getting vaccinated – up from 41 per cent who expressed the same desire to get vaccinated in January.

The idea of barring unvaccinated people from flying on aeroplanes has been widely discussed at an international level because some governments are likely to ease tough border restrictions only first to visitors who can prove they are fully vaccinated against the novel Coronavirus.

While U.S.-based airlines have been broadly supportive of such requirements for international travel, they are likely to outright reject a similar proof of vaccination for domestic air travel.

Last month, airlines lobbied the Biden administration to drop plans for a domestic pre-departure testing mandate arguing it would decimate demand and simply push people onto less safe modes of transport. A similar argument would be in play if vaccination became a pre-requisite to fly.

Digital vaccination passports are currently being developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and several app developers but there is currently no internationally agreed standard. The European Union has said it will develop a vaccination passport scheme, but this is unlikely to be ready before the summer.

The Biden administration has, however, avoided calls to lead the world in developing a global standard for vaccination certification.

The Reuters poll also found that 55 per cent of Americans believe that the unvaccinated should be banned from entering public gyms or movie theatres. So far, only 18 per cent of American’s have received at least a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine but President Biden hopes to make every American adult eligible for vaccination from May 1.

During a live televised address to the nation on Thursday evening, Biden said he was setting July 4 as Virus Independence Day.

The airline industry has touted its “multi-layered” protection measures, such as face mask mandates, deep cleaning, and hospital-grade air filters as reasons why air travel should be classed as a low-risk activity. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has, however, refused to change guidance dissuading people from travelling, saying fully vaccinated people should still avoid all but essential travel.