David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
NOT Traveling Blog, 3rd
Week Of July
In 2014 I was voted
by USA Today readers as one of the top ten business travel bloggers in the
USA. Now mind you,
I turned out to be number ten on the list of ten, but I did make it on (with my
thanks to all those who voted.) Now
that we’re all stuck at home and not traveling, I had to think about what to do
with my blogs. I could stop writing them
entirely – waiting till we all get through the current COVID19 pandemic /
crisis. I could wax nostalgic and/or
complain about past trips. Or, I could
focus all of my efforts on my day job – growing the use of collaboration
technologies – especially in light of how many people are now forced to use
those tools for the first time. In
reflecting upon those choices, what I decided to do is compile an ongoing list
of observations during the crisis. Some
of these may amuse, some may inform, some may sadden and others may help. My goal will be for you to have seen
something in a different light than you did before you stopped to read the
blog. I was going to apologize for how
disjointed these thoughts may seem when put together, but then it dawned on me
that feeling disjointed is our new normal – at least for a little while.
The COVID19 pandemic is one of the biggest “bad news” stories of our lifetime. Because of that, many of my Not Traveling blogs focus on
negative stories. (I’m just the
messenger here folks.) I’m saving all
these articles on my computer with the title you see above – detailing the week
and month but not the year. That’s at
least one positive sign, as I’m hopeful that I won’t be writing them for more
than twelve months (but that’s probably a good estimate IMHO.) I will highlight some “good” stories as well
as the bad ones here, and will continue to do that as much as I can in the
future.
One sector I haven’t mentioned yet in these blogs – and probably
should have – is private charter flights.
I have some good friends that fly Hawkers, Learjets
and Cessnas and such – and they’re as busy as
ever. Why not? When you and / or your family and colleagues
really need to be somewhere else why take the chance that the greedy big
airlines have kept the center seat empty, cleaned the plane, or kept any of
their other dubious promises? A private
aircraft is often better cleaned (or you can show-up a bit early and wipe-down
all the surfaces yourself) and you can restrict the passengers to only those
you know. You can even ask the pilots
and crew to take a COVID test before flying. It’s certainly something to consider as this
crisis drags on. One of my best friends runs this group, but there are many, many
options for chartering a safer flight than the “friendly skies.”
I recently had to upgrade to a new mobile phone – a traumatic
experience for a tech-head / nerd like me.
(It was a painfully long but successful process.) As part of it I transferred many of my photos
and videos to the new device. It was a
welcome reminder of many of my past travels and events. I’ll try to share some of them with everyone
over the coming weeks – a sort of “what I did last summer and wish I could be
doing this summer” set of reminders. For
today’s blog, here is my visit last year to Maui and watching the sunrise over Haleakalā. It
is just one of the awesome things to see and do on Maui in Hawaii. (Click the photo to watch the video.)
Of course, just as I was feeling good, United Airlines jumps
into my newsfeed. Apparently, United
is warning employees that people are not flying as much as they were even a
week ago (no kidding) and they may have to make more cuts around October 1st. (Anyone surprised by that let me know as I
have a bridge to sell you.) When you
have a company that routinely lies to you, and the consequences of that lying
today is passengers risking death, you shouldn’t be surprised that people are
causing ‘travel demand [to slide] again
as coronavirus cases surged across much of the country.’ The most honest thing about what United said
to employees and the media is that the
airline does not expect demand to recover fully until a “widely accepted”
treatment or vaccine for the virus is available. That is the truth for everything –
travel, dining, entertainment, conferences, education – heck, as I said, everything. Any other positive news about things “returning
to normal” before that is merely wishful thinking. It’d be a good idea to keep that in mind as
politicians and business moguls blow more smoke up at you over the ensuing
weeks.
Finally this week, if you’re on Twitter, you need to follow New Jersey there. Yes, my current home state has a twitter
account that makes all New York / New Jersey people proud – with attitude and everything. It’s easy to read the tweets and imagine them
in Tony Soprano’s voice. Here are a few
of my recent favorites:
However, the best one recently is here:
Damn good advice.
Mask-up people.
As always, please feel free to write to me with comments or
items I should add to a future Not Traveling blog (or if you just need someone to write to.)
Stay safe, be well, hug those you’re sheltering with (but no one else)
and do your best to stay positive. We’re
going to be in this for a long while.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.