I Didn't Sign Up For This

Airlines abruptly lifted their mask requirements. Consumers deserve better.

This is the weekly free edition of this newsletter, which is 100% supported by readers like you. If you’re enjoying it and want to show your support, consider donating a subscription, or upgrading to the paid version.

This week, I wrote my CNN column about the abrupt lifting of mask requirements for planes, trains, and other forms of public transportation. I absolutely hate wearing a mask on long flights. I also wear a mask on long (and short) flights because I’m not a jerk, and because my own discomfort, however annoying I find it, is a reasonable enough burden to bear in exchange for keeping other people safe.

If you want to read more about the absurdity of this change — and the fact that the federal mask mandate was invalidated by a Trump-appointed judge who is an ideologue with so little experience she was deemed unfit for the bench by the American Bar Association — click over to CNN.com. What also strikes me about this change, especially as I prepare to travel, is that the airline I am flying (Delta) just pulled a total 180 on their safety protocols. I booked a ticket under a particular set of terms. Delta just changed them.

If the US had functional consumer protection laws, that would violate them.

I’m a healthy and triple-vaccinated 30-something; my chances of getting Covid are decreased thanks to my vaccine, my health status, and the various choices I have the privilege to make in my daily life. If I do get Covid — and I have resigned myself to the reality that I will probably, at some point, get Covid — my chance of becoming hospitalized or dying is teeny-tiny. I would really prefer not to get Covid, but the reality is that I will almost surely live if I do get it. For me, the stakes are pretty low.

But that isn’t true for everyone. It’s not true for the elderly. It’s not true for people who are on immunosuppressant drugs, or undergoing chemotherapy, or who have serious preexisting conditions.

Some of those folks — and some of the people who live with them, visit them regularly, or care for them — have to travel, too. And undoubtedly some are, like me, currently away from home with a plan to return by air, bus, or train. They were given zero notice; some were mid-flight when the captain announced that masks could come off.

That is wildly unfair and wildly inappropriate. As you can tell, I think lifting the mask mandate for public transport is a mistake. But even if airlines, bus companies, and train lines were going to lift it — and private companies, by the way, could absolutely have chosen to keep it in place — they should have given their customers the courtesy of a heads up and an option to change their travel plans. Even a week’s notice and a waiving of change fees would have been sufficient. That way, if someone was away from home, they could have returned before putting themselves at unnecessary risk.

Air travel is already miserable (although not quite as miserable as bus travel). When you buy a ticket, you agree to certain conditions, and the airline has (or should have) certain obligations. Already, airlines in the US routinely don’t hold up their end of the bargain — they encroach on your physical space, they don’t get you to where you’re going on time, sometimes they don’t even have a seat for you or get you to where you were going at all; they pull all sorts of shenanigans that are not nearly as commonplace in countries with better consumer protection laws. It is entirely reasonable to expect that if you book a ticket with an airline that advertises certain safety protocols, then those safety protocols will be in place when you travel. And if those safety protocols are going to be rescinded, then the airline needs to give its customers sufficient time to come up with another option.

Consumers deserve basic protections, is what I am saying. It would have cost the airlines nothing to announce that this new mask-optional policy would be going into effect in a week, or on May 1, or any date even a tiny bit into the future.

Personally, I wouldn’t have changed my plans. Maybe you wouldn’t have, either. But the mom of the kid with cancer, or the caretaker of an elderly parent, or the older man with asthma might have. They should have had the chance. And whatever you feel about mask mandates, I hope you agree that American consumers deserve more rights than we have — and that if we enter into an agreement with a large company, and if we’re expected to uphold our end of the bargain, then they should uphold theirs and provide they service and safety they promised.

xx Jill

p.s. If you are enjoying this newsletter and would like to support independent feminist-minded journalism, please do consider upgrading to a paid subscription. This entire endeavor is supported by readers like you.