Speaker 1: It's Monday, ma. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: As travel is restricted across much of the world, there
Speaker 1: are a ton of cheap airfare deals. While you shouldn't
Speaker 1: fly during a pandemic, you might want to consider booking
Speaker 1: a short getaway later in the year once things calmed down.
Speaker 1: Scott McCartney, middle seat columnists for The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: joins us for what to consider before snagging a travel bargain.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Scott, Sure, good to be with you.
Speaker 1: We always bring you on, Scott to talk about what's
Speaker 1: going on in the airline industry and right now amid
Speaker 1: this time of coronavirus and all that's going on with
Speaker 1: the social distancing. I know that the airline industry is
Speaker 1: taking a big hit, but for us at home, consumers
Speaker 1: staying home, going on and checking some of these things
Speaker 1: because everybody's always kind of planning ahead for the future,
Speaker 1: we're seeing some very very cheap airfare coming up right now.
Speaker 1: But there's a big question amid kind of this uncertainty.
Speaker 1: We don't know how long this is all gonna last.
Speaker 1: Should you book something if you find a really good deal,
Speaker 1: Scott help us out with that. I think there are
Speaker 1: a few rules to consider, a few ways to go
Speaker 1: about this. But what's interesting is that a lot of
Speaker 1: these really great deals extend into the fall and even
Speaker 1: next year. Airlines have pretty well excluded holiday periods, and
Speaker 1: all the searching I did, you're not gonna find ultra
Speaker 1: cheap tickets for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but you can much
Speaker 1: of the rest of the year. And so I would
Speaker 1: say with domestic trips, for a lot of people, it
Speaker 1: may be worth the gamble. I mean, it is a gamble.
Speaker 1: But if you can find a seventy one dollar fair
Speaker 1: for a trip in September October, or d fourteen dollar
Speaker 1: trip across the country, even a two fourteen dollar trip
Speaker 1: across the country, those are unbelievable prices and you really
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot tied up. So the gamble
Speaker 1: is you may not get to go on the trip
Speaker 1: right if things are still in flux, And it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, so what if you buy the tickets now?
Speaker 1: Airlines have waivers and way so you can just use
Speaker 1: that as a credit. But if you do get to
Speaker 1: go on the seventy one dollar round trip ticket score
Speaker 1: you win at. I think it's a different proposition for
Speaker 1: international travel, a lot more complexity there with countries shutting
Speaker 1: down borders to visitors and really kind of how far
Speaker 1: do you want to be away from home should there
Speaker 1: be a new flare up and things like that. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it's worth taking the gamble right now
Speaker 1: and international trips, But I think on some of these
Speaker 1: really ultra cheap domestic tickets, if you're comfortable with it,
Speaker 1: it's a good thing to try. What range would you
Speaker 1: say we should be talking about, because I was looking
Speaker 1: through the article. There's some Boston to Orlando in mid
Speaker 1: June for forty one dollars. That's round trip. That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: There's one for a hundred and seventy seven bucks from
Speaker 1: New York to Los Angeles that's in early June. New
Speaker 1: York right now is kind of this epicenter of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus in the United States, so that might be a
Speaker 1: little tough. So what kind of time period are we
Speaker 1: looking at maximize our chances of being safe this and
Speaker 1: there are several different parameters to the airlines have put
Speaker 1: out waivers for buying tickets through the end of March.
Speaker 1: American just extended there's today to April fifteen. I think
Speaker 1: those will continue to go out. We just saw the
Speaker 1: Olympics postponed, and that was July. I think June is
Speaker 1: very much in doubt. That's a real gamble. But if
Speaker 1: things do start turning around in April, it could be
Speaker 1: but I would be really careful about June and even July.
Speaker 1: So I think the smart booking really comes to August, September, October,
Speaker 1: even November, um and you know, I think I think
Speaker 1: by that time we are all gonna be so tired
Speaker 1: of being cooped up that there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of interest in travel. On the other hand, I think
Speaker 1: the other thing to consider is that there are gonna
Speaker 1: be cheap prices for a long time to come, and
Speaker 1: so you don't have to do this now. You can wait,
Speaker 1: and there are gonna be bargains to Orlando in late
Speaker 1: summer early fall for a while. I think airlines are
Speaker 1: gonna have sales to get people traveling again. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of reluctance to start traveling again, and
Speaker 1: so they'll try and sort of prime the pump that way.
Speaker 1: But also What you have to remember is they're pulling
Speaker 1: out all kinds of capacity from their schedules. You know,
Speaker 1: of international flying, we're seeing the potential of even for
Speaker 1: a temporary period, grounding virtually all domestic flying. So as
Speaker 1: that capacity comes back into the schedule, it's like new
Speaker 1: flights to everywhere. There are no bookings for those flights.
Speaker 1: To get the bookings back into those aircraft cabins, they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to offer really deep discounts in order to
Speaker 1: fill seats. And one of these suggestions that you made
Speaker 1: in your piece, which I thought was pretty good, is
Speaker 1: consider multiple short trips. You know, nobody's gonna go for
Speaker 1: this big three week global adventure, especially with the uncertainty
Speaker 1: and kind of other countries, you know, you know how
Speaker 1: they're treating their travel restrictions and whatnot. So maybe some
Speaker 1: of these shorter trips we can get aways, the tiny
Speaker 1: things that you can handle easily can still be close
Speaker 1: and if they do get canceled or something, you haven't
Speaker 1: put so much into it. I think that's right. And
Speaker 1: even when you're on the trip, you have a ticket
Speaker 1: home in in a relatively short period of time, right,
Speaker 1: So go to an island for a couple of days
Speaker 1: and if all of a sudden things turned and you've
Speaker 1: got to get home, well you've got a ticket to
Speaker 1: get home pretty quickly, and then just turn around and
Speaker 1: repack and go off to a mountain somewhere or something
Speaker 1: like that. That I think you could have a lot
Speaker 1: of fun with multiple short trips where you're never really
Speaker 1: in danger of getting stranded somewhere. You also mentioned don't
Speaker 1: buy anything that has cancelation penalties right now. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of them are waving that, so hopefully you
Speaker 1: can get in on that. But one thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask is a travel insurance what do we make
Speaker 1: of that during this time right now? Don't make anything
Speaker 1: of it because it's no good. Almost all standard policies
Speaker 1: have an exclusion in it for pandemic. Travel insurance companies
Speaker 1: have very clearly said the danger of coronavirus is own,
Speaker 1: so they're not covering it. It's the same philosophy that
Speaker 1: if if your house is on fire, you can't run
Speaker 1: out and get homeowners insurance right because you know the
Speaker 1: house is on fire, so now you know what the
Speaker 1: danger is. Just like the hurricane is bearing down on
Speaker 1: the island, you can't run out and get insurance. You've
Speaker 1: got to do it before, so standard insurance offers no
Speaker 1: coverage in these situations. The only travel insurance you could
Speaker 1: consider at this point is what's called cancel for any reason.
Speaker 1: That's more expensive. The coverage of your losses is less.
Speaker 1: But the reality is that you're really not gonna have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of losses. If you're careful about protecting yourselves.
Speaker 1: Airlines will at worst give you a voucher for the
Speaker 1: value and in many cases give you a refund. If
Speaker 1: you make sure that your hotel is refundable, your tour,
Speaker 1: your whatever you've got packed in there, even expensive Safari's
Speaker 1: or whatever. You protect yourself that way, you don't need
Speaker 1: travel insurance. Scott McCartney, Middle seat columnists at The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Sure
Speaker 1: great to be with you. Oscar. I'm Oscar Emiris and
Speaker 1: this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
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