Grounded for a Year... and Counting

[canyonwalker]

I've been grounded for a year. As of today it's been a year since I boarded an airplane or set foot in an airport. My last flight was a return home from a work trip to Las Vegas, on 20 Feb 2020.

What happened after Feb 20? Coronavirus, duh. Even though social-distancing policies and mandatory business restrictions, aka "lockdowns", only started on March 17 voluntary closures began at least 3 weeks before that. Business trips I was planning to meet customers the last week of February and early March were canceled as companies adopted no-visitors policies and encouraged their own employees to work from home. Major trade shows started cancelling in late February, too.

I stayed optimistic through much of 2020 about being able to return to flight. When the lockdown came around I observed that it was only for 3 weeks and held onto tickets I'd booked for travel in early April. Oh, how innocent and quaint that optimism seems now! I canceled those tickets within a few weeks, of course. Tickets for travel in May I had to rebook when a friend's wedding was rescheduled to July, then moved to August, then moved 2,500 miles closer to home. Ultimately instead of flying to witness their wedding I got ordained and officiated their wedding. We made the news in San Francisco!

Other flight plans were made and dashed. Thanksgiving was canceled. The months without flying piled up. At a full year aground now this is the longest I've gone without flying in more than 25 years. And it's not over yet.

I'm thinking ahead to when it'll be safe enough to travel... when I've gotten the vaccine and so have enough other people for things to start to return to normal. Is that May? June? July? Now would be the time to start booking plans, but having made and canceled so many in the past year I've lost my taste for it.

Comments

[culfinriel]

Since it seems many companies have rescinded their temporary will refund for any Covid reason policies, I am very gun shy about booking anything, ever, until there's a for sure status baseline going forward. I am not up for losing money on top of having to cancel plans at this point, considering the level of fried by stupid I feel. Others may be more bold.

[canyonwalker]

Refundability is important in making travel reservations right. Major health risks remain today and it's unclear how quickly they'll diminish. Here's my approach to it:

1) I'm currently estimating it'll be sometime in May when I can complete my two-dose vaccination. I'm not looking to plan any air travel before then. Hawk and I may do a few weekend-type road trips in April and May. We'd book hotel nights for those. Cancellation policy isn't a huge concern as we'd likely only book them a week ahead of time anyway.

2) For May-June travel I'd want 100% refundability. Fortunately, with my preferred airline, Southwest, I effectively have that. And hotels generally have 2- or 3-day advanced cancellation policies at worst.

3) For later summer travel I might be willing to risk an air cancellation fee. That's relevant because we'd like to fly to places not well served by Southwest— meaning we'd have to fly a legacy airline with legacy cancellation fees. I expect that July is far enough out that things should be better by then.

4) For late-2021 travel, like Thanksgiving, I think I'd be fine booking travel that's not refundable without a fee. I do have options that are fee-less, so that reduces the total amount of financial risk. I'm not considering booking a $3,000 use-it-or-lose-it travel package!