Flew to finally meet our first grandchild, who is now 2 months old in NH.
Flew, both ways, got a few COVID surprises, some good, some WTF
- First WTF: tickets, talk about not consistent. Our "normal" route is a small flight from Gillette or Casper to Denver, then from Denver we can get anywhere. Cost somewhere around $500. This one, first off Gillette as an end point, had no options, none. From Casper, tickets where running about $1600/person. So we drove to Rapid City SD, flew American Airlines, rather than United, round trip, tickets $400/person.
- Route was "interesting". Rapid City to Charlotte NC to Manchester NH.. Then Manchester to DC to Dallas to Rapid City.
- The flights: First, they were smaller planes (except DC to Dallas), and all were very close to full. All on time/early!
- Airports restaurants mostly closed, fast food open, one or 2 sit downs open, but for the most part shops/food are closed or limited.
- American Air REQUIRES a mask. Fair enough, we knew it going it, so we would follow. They gave them to you to get on the plane. HOWEVER what we then saw is within minutes of boarding, 50% of people had them off or lowered. Getting off the plane 75% got off without a mask. The flight attendants did nohting about this.
While in NH we had local news on, they had the banner across the bottom, town by town, for current and total COVID numbers. The towns on the MA border had some cases, with the exception of two of the most populated cities, the numbers were almost totally single digit totals. There's no reason that state is shut down.
Was an interesting trip.
