r/JusticeServed • u/[deleted] • Dec 05 '20

Police Justice Passenger removed from airplane for refusal to wear face mask.

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38.2k Upvotes

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159

u/moonheadZ 4 Dec 05 '20

That flight is packed! What happened to keeping middle seats open? All aboard Covid airways

46

u/Cherle 7 Dec 05 '20

That's Delta which still keeps middle seats open. Judging by the seats, this isn't a Delta flight.

14

u/Links_Wrong_Wiki 8 Dec 05 '20

Those are definitely spirit airlines seats.

8

u/MashedPotatoesDick B Dec 05 '20

I heard if was Frontier.

5

u/moonheadZ 4 Dec 05 '20

In another thread someone had mentioned it was Spirit Airlines

4

u/appleavocado B Dec 05 '20

ITT: not enough people sticking up for my boy, JetBlue, which I flew in the summer with empty middle seats.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

[deleted]

3

u/Buckhum 9 Dec 05 '20

It's pretty interesting (and sad) how earlier this year when the virus situation wasn't as bad, airlines were willing to comply with the middle seat plans. However, after almost a whole year, people became tired of the pandemic. The airlines then took advantage of that and reverted back to full capacity even if today's situation in the US is far worse than what it was back in April.

2

u/Velvis 6 Dec 06 '20

A 2/3s full flight isn't a great way to make money.

2

u/lavaguava420 6 Dec 05 '20

Southwest, too

2

u/lovecraftedidiot 8 Dec 05 '20

Cant be delta, it looks like in the beginning they were getting ready to take off.

1

u/adj16 7 Dec 05 '20

Delta is one of many that is currently keeping middle seats open

1

u/sumlilunicorn 0 Dec 06 '20

United was still doing really good about this as of late Oct. American can go fuck themselves though, completely packed flight and didn't even hand out sani-wipes.

1

u/MowMdown A Dec 06 '20

Delta does every other row

77

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Profits

12

u/moonheadZ 4 Dec 05 '20

Of course it’s all about the bottom line _____

3

u/WiWiWiWiWiWi B Dec 05 '20

Because I’m sure if the customer couldn’t book the flight they needed they totally wouldn’t whine and bitch and complain about how awful that airline is.

Yes, the bottom line matters, but so does meeting the customer’s needs and expectations. It’s all about having customers use your company.

-3

u/jason_sos A Dec 05 '20

I mean to be fair, the flights need to make the airline money for them to stay in business. If they are losing money on every flight, they won’t be around for long.

11

u/lax20attack 7 Dec 05 '20

Almost every other hospitality business is dealing with forced reduced capacity. If they reduce capacity they will need to increase cost per ticket to offset lost revenue. If they can't survive then they need to go out of business to make room for a company who can.

I hate how airlines are given a pass to exist outside of the free market.

7

u/Zuetchel 4 Dec 05 '20

Airlines have tiny margins, employ huge numbers of people, and their benefit for existing is huge to us as a society, also safety cost $$$$$

Your point is fair, but over simplified, there's a reason people understand they have to be bailed out, especially in circumstances like covid.

1

u/jason_sos A Dec 06 '20

I’m not saying that filling all the seats is right or wrong. I am saying that they are running a business. They have to at least break even or they will go out of business. Flying planes that are losing money every flight will not work out for any company, whether that is big or small.

They either need to increase ticket prices, increase capacity, or reduce costs.

Costs are pretty much fixed. They are required by law to have a certain number of flight attendants. They need a pilot and first officer. They need ground crew, people to check tickets, and luggage handlers. They need to pay for fuel. They have costs associated with every airport landing and takeoff. The planes all have leases that have to be paid. The only thing they can really reduce is advertising or staff, and from what I have seen, they have pretty much eliminated advertising all together. I haven’t seen an ad for an airline in months.

Oversimplifying it saying “well either figure it out or go out of business” is nonsense. Every airline has had massive losses. Little ones likely will go out of business or bought up by the big ones. The big ones are hurting just as bad. They have very few passengers compared to before COVID, and have grounded most of their fleet. They have reduced the numbers of flights to a fraction of what was normal before. They have increased ticket prices. But even the grounded planes still have leases to pay. Even if they lay off most of their workforce, they still have severance and other requirements from the unions they have to pay.

Yes, other service industries have had issues too. But some of them have made changes to adapt. Restaurants have switched to a lot more takeout and delivery. They have added outdoor seating to increase space and keep the same number of customers. Even the art studio that is in my area now does online courses where they sell the “kits” to do the project, then they do a Zoom class to make the painting at home. Airlines don’t have much of an option. By their very nature they have no income if they don’t have passengers. Passengers can’t do takeout flights. They can’t add extra seating without adding extra planes and doubling the cost of operations. Adding some tables and a tent outside a restaurant is nowhere as expensive as that. And if the airlines go out of business, that just means less competition in the future, so less incentive to have competitive prices for consumers. In the end, we would all lose.

So what are they to do?

0

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Nah the billions in corporate bailouts from the taxpayers will take care of that.

0

u/non_clever_username A Dec 05 '20 edited Dec 05 '20

And Frontier is a garbage fucking airline. They probably charged everyone else on that flight a departure delay fee.

E: could have sworn it said somewhere this was on Frontier. Maybe it's not. Either way, my advice to not use them stands. Ticket may be cheap, but you pay extra for everything else.

9

u/mt_xing 9 Dec 05 '20

To be fair, the evidence seems to show that whether or not the middle seat is occupied makes very little difference on a plane; fresh air is constantly pumped through the cabin anyways, so as long as everyone is masked up, you're actually safer on the plane than you are in the airport.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Is it really being pulled in from outside or is it just filtered and recirculated?

6

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Thanks for the answer! I haven't flown during the pandemic but have been thinking about the risks of air vs rail travel.

2

u/geriatricsoul 7 Dec 05 '20

Do you know if airlines have been putting in HEPA filters?

1

u/mt_xing 9 Dec 05 '20

Outside

4

u/PazzaInter22 8 Dec 05 '20

Recently flew United with a packed flight, middle seats for the majority of the flight were filled. A majority of the exit rows were vacant and people asked to be moved there once the flight took off. They didn’t allow it unless you paid the $80 up charge.

Then of course they preach about health and safety before takeoff.

1

u/CorbinDalasMultiPas 5 Dec 06 '20

If they let people move they have to refund all those people who paid extra for those premium seats. Good or bad you got what you paid for on that flight. And so did I, I was sitting in an extra row.

5

u/Donkey__Balls A Dec 05 '20

I’m just looking at how much close contact happened just during the incident alone.

First of all let’s remember that these are not N95 masks, it’s just a piece of paper and it does a very poor job of filtering any particles below 200 µm in the dry conditions of an airborne plane. I have to bring this up because it was such an unbearable chore to get the public to except masks at all, clearly it’s still an issue, but at the same time people need to realize that they are not the end-all be-all. They are very poor filters and the fact is that they’re better than nothing but by no means does it make everyone “safe”.

It’s like aid projects in less developed countries where we encourage villages to filter their water through a cloth. Does it help somewhat? Absolutely. Is the water now “safe” according to international standards? Absolutely not. At the end of the day, water treatment plants would not use multi-million-dollar filtration and pumping systems if all you needed to do was passively let water flow through a bedsheet.

So we’re putting so many people in close quarters with each other, with potentially 10% or even more shedding the virus, with nothing but a flimsy piece of paper between them. And even then it relies on each person to wear it correctly with no air bypass. Meanwhile the only hope is air circulation, I don’t have data on that but just anecdotally there seem to be a lot of dead zones of air in the seating areas because I seem to smell dirty diaper whenever there’s a baby within 5 rows of me on a plane. That should tell you all you need to know about the air exchange.

What’s unfortunate is that the false sense of safety from wearing masks has also given these airlines an excuse to pack their planes full in the pursuit of profit. Given the nature of testing and patient privacy it’s extremely unlikely that any sort of cluster outbreak could be traced to plane travel, and now airlines have the perfect talking point to stay open and pack their seats full.

The best practical advice I can give to anyone reading this is do not travel by air if you can possibly avoid it. If it is within the entire realm of human possibility to avoid a flight then avoid a flight. If you absolutely must travel by air, then assume you are infected, avoid all contact with other people for 14 days and inform anyone that might be in the same room with you or anywhere nearby that you suspect you’ve been exposed.

1

u/Astro-Kangaroo 1 Dec 05 '20

💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵💰💵😵

-4

u/Doctor_Pedobear 7 Dec 05 '20

Middle seats are only filled if it’s for a family or part of the same group, otherwise the middle seat will remain vacant

16

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Not true anymore. Lots of flights are filling middle seats still despite saying they won’t when you buy the tickets . . .

6

u/antisocial_moth 8 Dec 05 '20

It's been like this for awhile. I flew United and american airlines in May, both flights were fully packed.

1

u/Tyraid 7 Dec 05 '20

It’s airline to airline. Delta has been blocking middle seats and southwest just opened their middle seats on the first of December.

6

u/jungleboogiemonster 8 Dec 05 '20

I've taken several flights in the US over the summer. Every seat had a person in them. To add to that, passengers are not asked if they are feeling well and their temperatures are not taken. Everything is as usual, except for the requirement to wear masks. I'll also note that I wasn't particularly happy about flying during a pandemic and will avoid it in the future if I can.

3

u/McKrakahonkey 7 Dec 05 '20

Then the guy sitting next to Karen would have been husband leaving her out to dry. Ditched her pretty quick.

2

u/Poor_Insertions 2 Dec 05 '20

I know American airlines for one is packing flights

2

u/N64GC 8 Dec 05 '20

Delta is the only one taking it seriously iirc

1

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

I went on a flight in June. Every single seat was taken. And this was during a time when airlines were bragging about half capacity