United Airlines says it's dropping two of the changes it made to make flying safer during the height of the pandemic, saying they are no longer necessary: a robot sanitizing spray before each flight, and row-by-row boarding and deplaning.
Dropping the spraying back to once a week makes some sense in the light of CDC guidance that environmental surfaces are not a significant factor in virus spread, but some passengers will certainly be sad to see the reversion to pre-pandemic boarding chaos.
The careful boarding by rows was intended to allow a little more distance while boarding and reduce instances of passengers having to squeeze past each other in aisles, while the few-rows-at-a-time deplaning achieved the same effect and also made pulling bags down from overheads less chaotic.
While the two procedures temporarily eroded privileges for some groups of elite travelers or cardholders, Gumbo observed on four recent United flights that there was little grumbling, and a good result in speed and lack of jostling. It begs the question: Why does it take a pandemic to do it right?
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