Yahoo Finance's Adam Shapiro details the continued airline confusion travelers and staff are experiencing as flights are still being delayed or cancelled due to Omicron concerns and inclement weather patterns, in addition to commenting on the airlines' labor shortage issues and new COVID-19 testing policies.
Video Transcript
- Airlines continue to be in flight cancelation mode. JetBlue is reportedly reducing its flight schedule through January 13 by nearly 1,300 flights as the omicron variant rips through its staff. Yahoo Finance anchor Adam Shapiro is here with more. Adam, is there any relief in sight here?
ADAM SHAPIRO: For whom? For the passengers or for the airlines? First, let's talk about the stock price for the airlines right now because if we can pull that up, you're going to see that the airline shares are actually trading a little bit higher right now. They've been taking a beating for the last couple of days, especially because of the cancelations. It depends which airline you ask.
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For instance, in the cases of Delta, they're talking about it being a contributing factor of both their staff getting ill, but also there have been real bad weather problems out West. Sea-Tac Airport up in the Northwest has been a problem because of snow in that part of the world. So where do we stand right now? First, let me give you the overall TSA numbers because the number of people going through airport checkpoints is still pretty high, especially when you compare it to 2019. Just yesterday, we had 2,049,000 people go through security at airports. In 2019, it would have been 200,000, 300,000. And the numbers have actually been very close, despite the cancelations, to 2019.
So where do we stand with this weekend? I'm going to quote from Delta Airlines. It's not encouraging. For the upcoming weekend, Delta projects daily cancelations between 200, 300 flights out of more than 4,000 total daily departures as teams across our system continue to do all possible to mitigate constraints from increasing winter weather and the omicron variant.
Delta, by the way, is going to report earnings for the fourth quarter on January 13. They're always the first to do that. So we're going to get a sense of what's really going on, especially as we look forward to bookings. If you get canceled, each airline has a different policy regarding cancelations, whether it be Delta, American, Southwest, United. For instance, if you just Google your airline and then cancelation policy, your eyes will bug out trying to make heads or tails of this. But I've pulled up the United refund policy.
And if your travel plans have been impaired by COVID-19, depending on the severity of the schedule disruption, you may be eligible for a refund. There was a period when they had to refund you. And there have been all kinds of issues with people getting the cash value refund at the beginning of the pandemic. That's no longer the case. Each airline has a different policy, which corresponds to did you buy a ticket that allows for a refund and all of those different issues. So they don't have to change fees. But the cancelation policies are different. And you're going to have to go to their website to read the cancelation policy. And you might want to have a lawyer with you when you read it to try and understand it.
- That's no fun. Adam, there was that big change that the CDC made to the quarantine recommendations, in part to help staffing issues at places like the airlines, right, over protests from the flight attendants union, for example, they made this change. Have we gotten any indication from the airlines as to whether this is helpful?
ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, Delta has already instituted its new requirements that you will get five days paid sick leave if you have a COVID infection if you're an employee. But then you have to come back to work. And by the way, you don't have to provide a negative test in order to come back to work. So I'll let you make the judgment call as to how at least Delta Airlines is implementing this.
One thing to keep in mind too, the flight attendants union Sara Nelson is a great advocate for flight attendants, but the largest airline within that realm with which the flight attendants union represents is United. Delta is not organized, its flight attendants union. And Sara Nelson's union is attempting to organize the Delta flight attendants. So the verbiage that comes out of the flight attendants union is a little bit more aggressive when they're talking about Delta.
But in all of the airlines, they're looking at-- you saw the CEOs testify before the omicron variant really started to impact all kinds of things-- talking about mask mandates and how they would like to drop the mask. Well, the mask mandate gets revisited in mid-March. TSA extended it before omicron started to sweep across the country.
On December 2, they announced the mask mandate on airlines will go until mid-March. They'll revisit it then. You also have Anthony Fauci, Julie, talking about he would be in favor, but he's not saying they should do it, a vaccine requirement to fly domestically. It's not the issue yet. But it's certainly something that's being put out there by very influential people.
- I think I'm just going to try to stay home. Adam Shapiro, thanks so much. Have a Happy New Year.