Coronavirus - Travel impacts II

[copyright1997reloaded]

I see lots of people posting about cancelling and losing $. My strategy would be the following:
1) Cancel anything that can be cancelled w/o a penalty
2) Wait it out on other items. There is a chance that as the situation escalates cancellation policies will be changed to allow you to rebook and/or cancel completely.

I can see us quickly getting to a point where hotel chains, airlines, etc do this due to a ground swell of complaints.

Sometimes it is better to put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

 

[Scrapr]

Today the Louvre staff refused to work. There was a employee meeting ahead of the opening. Paris also banned large inside gatherings of >5k people.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20200301/frances-louvre-museum-closed-due-to-virus-fears

An American Airlines flight to Milan was cancelled as the cabin crew refused to fly. But apparently AA was going to deadhead them back from Milan. At no pay on the deadhead. AA also cancelled all (?) flights to Milan to about April 25. Other flights to Italy not affected


https://onemileatatime.com/american-airlines-suspends-milan-flights/

I may be cancelling my London Paris trip April

 

[audreyh1]

American Airlines has a new temporary change to their purchase policy (effective for purchase from 3/1 to 3/16) where you can get a credit on any purchase of a ticket (travel from 3/1/2020 to 1/26/2021) if you cancel your flight within 2 weeks of the travel date. Here are the details...this will explain it better than I did:

https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/no-change-fee-terms-and-conditions.jsp

That’s very narrow and certainly doesn’t apply to tickets purchased before yesterday.

I guess people have way slowed down buying airline tickets in anticipation of needing to cancel.

 

[cheyrl]

Planning Italian vacation for early July

We had just started planning our European vacation before the Covid-19 news blew up. We have two adult sons in their twenties, and this was to be the European trip we dreamed of giving them. DH and I have travelled in Europe a few times, but taking the family is a big deal for us! We were lucky to find a couple weeks in early July when they could both get time off from work in early July.

Our main destination is Italy and we also planned on spending a week in southern Germany. Airbnb's are mostly booked but cancellable. We haven't booked airfare yet and we have always gone with non-refundable to save money. We need to investigate trip insurance, since this is the first time our medical insurance is through the ACA instead of employer-provided. I'm guessing the cancellation policy cost is going to be through the roof!



Any thoughts on whether Covid-19 is likely to be played out by July 1?

 

[Nemo2]

Any thoughts on whether Covid-19 is likely to be played out by July 1?

Ah, bummer..."you missed it by that much". Maxwell Smart.

 

[Dtail]

Ah, bummer..."you missed it by that much". Maxwell Smart.

Would you believe by Dec 1st?

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

We had just started planning our European vacation before the Covid-19 news blew up. We have two adult sons in their twenties, and this was to be the European trip we dreamed of giving them. DH and I have travelled in Europe a few times, but taking the family is a big deal for us! We were lucky to find a couple weeks in early July when they could both get time off from work in early July.

Our main destination is Italy and we also planned on spending a week in southern Germany. Airbnb's are mostly booked but cancellable. We haven't booked airfare yet and we have always gone with non-refundable to save money. We need to investigate trip insurance, since this is the first time our medical insurance is through the ACA instead of employer-provided. I'm guessing the cancellation policy cost is going to be through the roof!

Any thoughts on whether Covid-19 is likely to be played out by July 1?

I think we're as likely to guess right about that as we are about market timing....

We're in very much the same boat, except we've already booked the airfare. We did pay more for refundable hotel deposits, so we can cancel and "only" lose $3K, but I'm hoping British Airways will have a policy similar to AA, so at this point we're going to wait and see.

But if you want my (over)educated guess, I'm thinking that COVID-19 will soon become much like the seasonal flu: endemic, and hard to avoid. The mortality rates will settle closer to 1%, which is still much higher than the seasonal flu, but lower than the initial outbreak. The elderly and those with compromised immune systems will have to take precautions, but the rest of us will just learn to live with it.

 

[Nemo2]

https://news.yahoo.com/police-clash...ing-coronavirus-among-tourists-193238500.html

Police clash with French islanders fearing coronavirus among tourists

Saint-Denis de la Reunion (AFP) - Police used tear gas on protesting residents of France's Indian Ocean territory Reunion Island on Sunday who tried to block passengers of a cruise ship turned away from nearby Madagascar for fear there may be people infected with the coronavirus on board.

The incident came just hours after clashes between police and protesters near the airport in Martinique, another French overseas territory, demanding strict control of any new arrivals as panic over the outbreak spreads.

Neither Ile de la Reunion, (which I have been to twice) or Martinique, (which I have visited once), are very large, (comparatively speaking).

 

[EastWest Gal]

NW, the TV will be in a language you don’t understand). Hopefully it would be free.

I have been to Italy each year for the past year and the TV had a couple of English language channels. I was also able to select English as a the language on the TV and several channels had English voice over or subtitles. A lot of the "entertainment" shows were American shows. Last year was the first time I explored the TV to any great degree.

 

[Tiger8693]

https://news.yahoo.com/police-clash...ing-coronavirus-among-tourists-193238500.html

Police clash with French islanders fearing coronavirus among tourists



Neither Ile de la Reunion, (which I have been to twice) or Martinique, (which I have visited once), are very large, (comparatively speaking).

This is what is crazy. There is so much disinformation and panic, that the reaction to this will be worse than the virus itself.

Where's the panic over the 18k deaths from the flu I heard on the news this AM?

Ridiculous. But good buying opportunity.

 

[Sunset]

This is what is crazy. There is so much disinformation and panic, that the reaction to this will be worse than the virus itself.

Where's the panic over the 18k deaths from the flu I heard on the news this AM?

Ridiculous. But good buying opportunity.

Unless you test the 18K deaths from flu, you don't really know they are all the flu, perhaps this year the flu is very mild, and mixed in are actually some deaths from covid-19.

 

[Chuckanut]

American Airlines has a new temporary change to their purchase policy (effective for purchase from 3/1 to 3/16) where you can get a credit on any purchase of a ticket (travel from 3/1/2020 to 1/26/2021) if you cancel your flight within 2 weeks of the travel date. Here are the details...this will explain it better than I did:

https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/no-change-fee-terms-and-conditions.jsp

This sounds good on the surface, but I have to wonder about ticket prices. Will they be increasing the price over what it normally would be at this time of year? If so, one is simply paying for insurance. OTOH, if prices are in the normal range, it's better than the normal deal.

Keep in mind this is to be able to change your tickets, not for a refund of the money. It also keeps the non-refundable $$'s flowing into AA. They must like that.

 

[BeachOrCity]

Travel insurance for Medical / Evac

Expensive trip of a lifetime in April (Indian Ocean / South Africa).
Have Chase Sapphire reserve insurance covering 20K if provider cancels, and provides evacuation coverage as well.

My question is: Are these $100-200 Medical and Evac policies (cancel policies are useless at this point as CFAR is not doable at this stage) even worth it?

I hear that if you get in an area, the evacuation insurance is useless because even if the insurer agree's to it, the gov't won't if you are in quarantine zone?

Medical? I have a BCBS policy which will pay after deductible for the foreign care on reimbursement basis, so what would medical really get me?

Wondering if anyone has researched this and found some general answers.

(Note: we have decided that our decision to go / no go will be made right before the trip based on conditions at that time (early April)....and we will throw away the money if it does not seem wise to go.

 

[ivinsfan]

That’s very narrow and certainly doesn’t apply to tickets purchased before yesterday.

I guess people have way slowed down buying airline tickets in anticipation of needing to cancel.

It's a start of some flexibility from a very inflexible industry. Baby steps I guess. and I bet you're right future bookings have to be way down. I guess they feel if they made it retroactive at this points it would escalate. Keeping in mind they are just offering a credit and not your money refunded.

 

[ivinsfan]

I think we're as likely to guess right about that as we are about market timing....

We're in very much the same boat, except we've already booked the airfare. We did pay more for refundable hotel deposits, so we can cancel and "only" lose $3K, but I'm hoping British Airways will have a policy similar to AA, so at this point we're going to wait and see.

But if you want my (over)educated guess, I'm thinking that COVID-19 will soon become much like the seasonal flu: endemic, and hard to avoid. The mortality rates will settle closer to 1%, which is still much higher than the seasonal flu, but lower than the initial outbreak. The elderly and those with compromised immune systems will have to take precautions, but the rest of us will just learn to live with it.

This brings a question with a different answer for everyone. Figure at some point you will eventually be exposed to it. Do you A.. just stay close to the comforts of home and your own doctors? B stay home until hopefully they find a vaccine which if it's like the flu vaccine might be 50% effective. Or C.. just go about your business as usual figuring if I get it I get it and I'm not making my lifestyle about dodging potential viruses.

I suspect everyone has their own reasons for picking one of the three. For us during heavy flu season we don't go on airplanes or around big crowds.

We do spend time with our small grandchildren if they are well. If they are unwell we reschedule. So we pick and choose what's important to us.

 

[Bestwifeever]

American Airlines has a new temporary change to their purchase policy (effective for purchase from 3/1 to 3/16) where you can get a credit on any purchase of a ticket (travel from 3/1/2020 to 1/26/2021) if you cancel your flight within 2 weeks of the travel date. Here are the details...this will explain it better than I did:

https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/no-change-fee-terms-and-conditions.jsp

Of course we told DS to buy tickets on our dime on American last week for a Disney trip this summer.... and he did, on 2/26 Oh well.

 

[Chuckanut]

It's a start of some flexibility from a very inflexible industry. Baby steps I guess. and I bet you're right future bookings have to be way down. I guess they feel if they made it retroactive at this points it would escalate. Keeping in mind they are just offering a credit and not your money refunded.

I have some travel plans for later this year. FWIW, if they offered even a 50% refund of the normal non-refundable airfare, I would probably take the plunge and buy tickets now.

The other thing they could do is allow people to use the non-refunded money for a longer period of time. One year from the date the tickets were purchased is often not enough time to organize a new vacation plan. Give us two years from the date of the flight. Yes, I know, dream on.

 

[cheyrl]

Thinking about the larger community

This brings a question with a different answer for everyone. Figure at some point you will eventually be exposed to it. Do you A.. just stay close to the comforts of home and your own doctors? B stay home until hopefully they find a vaccine which if it's like the flu vaccine might be 50% effective. Or C.. just go about your business as usual figuring if I get it I get it and I'm not making my lifestyle about dodging potential viruses.

I suspect everyone has their own reasons for picking one of the three. For us during heavy flu season we don't go on airplanes or around big crowds.

We do spend time with our small grandchildren if they are well. If they are unwell we reschedule. So we pick and choose what's important to us.

We are all very healthy, but are also thinking about those in our orbit. DH and I are retired and could happily stay home for 2 weeks after our return. But we do have elderly (upper 80's) parents to help care for, and would not take a chance on passing a virus to them. Our sons are both employed out in very public areas, I'm sure they are in proximity to hundreds if not thousands of people a day.

 

[ivinsfan]

We are all very healthy, but are also thinking about those in our orbit. DH and I are retired and could happily stay home for 2 weeks after our return. But we do have elderly (upper 80's) parents to help care for, and would not take a chance on passing a virus to them. Our sons are both employed out in very public areas, I'm sure they are in proximity to hundreds if not thousands of people a day.

Right now community exposure certainly could be a concern, but it goes on long enough a new normal will have to emerge. From your post you could make a good case for isolating yourself from your sons to protect your parents. In the short term that workable but not really a long term answer.

 

[Tiger8693]

Unless you test the 18K deaths from flu, you don't really know they are all the flu, perhaps this year the flu is very mild, and mixed in are actually some deaths from covid-19.

I was going by what the Health Professional on the news stated, but I guess we could also say that maybe they are wrong about the COVID19 deaths as well. My point is that there have been millions of flu cases, and (somewhere near) 18k deaths.

Perspective here is what I think is important. It may turn out to be the next plague or Spanish Flu, but if so, all the re-allocation in the world probably won't mean a hill of beans.

 

[Sunset]

Expensive trip of a lifetime in April (Indian Ocean / South Africa).
Have Chase Sapphire reserve insurance covering 20K if provider cancels, and provides evacuation coverage as well.

My question is: Are these $100-200 Medical and Evac policies (cancel policies are useless at this point as CFAR is not doable at this stage) even worth it?

I hear that if you get in an area, the evacuation insurance is useless because even if the insurer agree's to it, the gov't won't if you are in quarantine zone?

Medical? I have a BCBS policy which will pay after deductible for the foreign care on reimbursement basis, so what would medical really get me?

Wondering if anyone has researched this and found some general answers.

(Note: we have decided that our decision to go / no go will be made right before the trip based on conditions at that time (early April)....and we will throw away the money if it does not seem wise to go.

We now always have year long secondary medical and evac insurance for traveling. This is because on every (or at least 10/11) cruises, we have seen one or more people evacuated off the ship.
The cost for secondary medical and evac ins for a year (70 days per trip max) is only $200. It covers as many trips as we can do in a year.

A cruise ship is a good way to judge this, as it's extremely hard to hide the evacuation of a guest, whereas in a city with 3,000 tourists, when 1 or 2 get taken to a hospital, I would never know about it.

 

[ivinsfan]

I was going by what the Health Professional on the news stated, but I guess we could also say that maybe they are wrong about the COVID19 deaths as well. My point is that there have been millions of flu cases, and (somewhere near) 18k deaths.

Perspective here is what I think is important. It may turn out to be the next plague or Spanish Flu, but if so, all the re-allocation in the world probably won't mean a hill of beans.

And two years ago the flu caused over 60K deaths. So even "the flu " is a generic terms for winter seasonal viruses.

 

[Sunset]

I was going by what the Health Professional on the news stated, but I guess we could also say that maybe they are wrong about the COVID19 deaths as well. My point is that there have been millions of flu cases, and (somewhere near) 18k deaths.

Perspective here is what I think is important. It may turn out to be the next plague or Spanish Flu, but if so, all the re-allocation in the world probably won't mean a hill of beans.

So the regular flu kills a lot of folks every year. It is funny how we are used to it like how autos kill about 40,000 every year (in USA).
It's just the cost of living.

Why are folks so worried about covid-19, perhaps because it's a new cost of living, plus it does kill a much higher percentage of confirmed cases than the flu, so if it spreads around as much as the flu, it will kill a much higher number ex: 180,000.
Finally the other thing to me that makes this scary is the lack of information and the conflicting statements by officials.

 

[Tiger8693]

So the regular flu kills a lot of folks every year. It is funny how we are used to it like how autos kill about 40,000 every year (in USA).
It's just the cost of living.

Why are folks so worried about covid-19, perhaps because it's a new cost of living, plus it does kill a much higher percentage of confirmed cases than the flu, so if it spreads around as much as the flu, it will kill a much higher number ex: 180,000.
Finally the other thing to me that makes this scary is the lack of information and the conflicting statements by officials.

Witht the apparent lack of a "good" diagnosis method, we could be "missing" a lot of actual cases, so that mortality rate could be a lot lower? There are a lot of what-if's now. I guess I am just the glass half full personality and not thinking 3-5% of the world population is going to be culled out. Hopefully I am right!

 

[sengsational]

It's a start of some flexibility from a very inflexible industry. Baby steps I guess. and I bet you're right future bookings have to be way down. I guess they feel if they made it retroactive at this points it would escalate. Keeping in mind they are just offering a credit and not your money refunded.

It's a move of desperation by an industry that's been less than respectful of their customers for decades; they aren't selling their staunch zero refund product in the face of this uncertainty, so they soften it slightly.



In their typical customer hostile mode, I expect they won't cancel flights early, even if they know they won't be flying. They'll wait for most people to cancel and forfeit their purchase, then cancel at the last moment, and then offer only a future credit to those who made their way to the gate. I hope I'm wrong, but if past behavior is any indication...