Hyatt to open its first hotel in Sweden

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• Shane says:

  30 Oct30 October 06:12

  Re: United Covid testing. Do you know what happens if someone test positive? Obviously, being responsible would mean that the individual should follow local government guidance. Will United ban the passenger from flying for xx days?

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    30 Oct30 October 06:34

    One would assume they wouldn’t have to and that the person would isolate themselves but if this was a connection and they’d originated in the middle of the country for example – what do they do? They surely can’t fly home but they don’t have a lot of other options unless United help?

  • TripRep says:

    30 Oct30 October 06:52

    Or thinking this through, if a Pax tests positive at the airport then everyone that’s been within a couple of metres of them could potentially become a carrier.

    Therefore testing them might not be able to pick it up at such an early stage.

    Interesting moral quandary for the airline, do they have to do a risk assessment for who else should self isolate and not board?

  • The real John says:

    30 Oct30 October 07:05

    And will they allow the ticket to be changed for free? Not the airline’s fault that you test positive, but you (hopefully, if you are being sensible) wouldn’t have known if they didn’t test you.

    • Rhys says:

      30 Oct30 October 08:39

      Yes, they said they would.

• Kazim says:

  30 Oct30 October 07:06

  Strikes me as a pointless exercise if no follow up testing is performed and usual quarantine rules apply. I’m not sure what meaningful data this will actually produce.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    30 Oct30 October 08:13

    How many passengers turn up to flights and test positive? Though if people take their own test before to be “sure”. Yes it’s sub optimal / pointless.

  • Andrew says:

    30 Oct30 October 09:40

    I suspect it’s partly to demonstrate to governments that a system of airport testing is feasible.

    To get international travel restarted the aim must be to remove CV19 related entry and quarantine restrictions if a passenger tests negative on departure. Yes it’s not perfect since they could have only very recently become infected but I suspect a passenger with a negative test is still a lot less likely to be positive than the average citizen in countries where CV19 is now endemic such as the US and most of Europe.

  • Brian says:

    30 Oct30 October 12:11

    Won’t make any difference. Any mass return to transatlantic flights won’t be happening any time soon (anyone who thinks there will be probably also thought that things would be back to normal by August).

  • Littlefish says:

    30 Oct30 October 16:25

    Presumably the data on Passengers tested, and nr of passengers denied boarding as positive will be available to US and UK governments. I’m sure United (and airlines) can flag that as responsible risk reduction.
    Clearly, it would be good if someone could pick up the ball at the other end to re-test the UA14 passengers on arrival and do similar on other NYC arrivals and compare the prevalence’s.
    There is plenty of Day +5 data now, but similarly an opportunity here to scope that in too as the advance here is pre-departure testing.
    One issue could well be sample size. 4 weeks time 3 flights and doubt loads are as much as 100. The pre-flight positives should give a good dataset; the downstream data wouldn’t be projecting enough positives … so informative as opposed to rigourous at that end.

• Nick says:

  30 Oct30 October 07:57

  It’ll keep the US lawyers happy! 😉

• Nick says:

  30 Oct30 October 08:20

  The first ‘meaningful data’ they could provide is to test people twice, once with these new fangled machines and once properly, to prove that ‘rapid testing’ actually works (no one has done this yet that I’ve seen). Until then it’s effectively meaningless. And I feel very sorry for anyone who’s travelled to NY on a small commuter jet with someone connecting to London, and who presumably could then be traced and told to isolate!

  Oh and hopefully Hyatt’s integration in Swedish life will go better than Amazon’s… seems not actually bothering to hire anyone who speaks Swedish is getting them into a bit of bother!

• Alice says:

  30 Oct30 October 08:23

  The PCR tests are flawed, so being on a par with those is not a good thing. And if you did trust the tests, you could do away with all the other measures.

  Statistically speaking, you would have to be on a plane with an infected person for 54 hours for transmission to occur. This is why there have only been 44 cases tracked to flying, despite there being 1.2 billion passengers flying.

  The odds of catching this on a plane are miniscule.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    30 Oct30 October 09:14

    Which 54hr route where those 44 people on?

    • Charlieface says:

      30 Oct30 October 09:28

      That’s not how statistics works.
      I think @Alice means to say you would have at least 50% chance of catching it after being on a plane for 54 hours, these people are far lower down the probability scale but it would still be possible.

      • callum says:

        30 Oct30 October 11:06

        The phrase “statistically speaking” does not mean “at least a 50% chance” – you’re adding in additional parameters, so no, you can’t just say “that’s not how statistics works”. It’s exactly how they work.

        On the veracity of the claim, I see it’s based on a single study, with the assumption that all passengers are wearing masks (categorically not the case in real life), no-one moves around on the plane (categorically not the case in real life) and only a single person on the plane was infectious (not remotely guaranteed in real life).

        While I’m perfectly happy to accept the chances of catching it on a plane are low, I completely reject the specific data presented. Likewise, contact tracing is beyond atrocious so there is no way you could possibly claim that only 44 cases being tracked to transmission in-plane means anything whatsoever.

        • Brian says:

          30 Oct30 October 12:16

          If you believed the data from the UK’s “world beating” contact tracing, barely any infections are caused by being anywhere other than in the home. As if people magically get covid whilst at home 🧐

        • Ken says:

          30 Oct30 October 15:05

          There have been 59 cases traced to a single from Boston to Dublin. 13 out of 49 passengers tested +ve and the plane was 17% full.

          The strain of COVID mainly in the UK now appears to be one first identified in Spain and the reasonable assumption is that it spread to UK via the brief tourist season.

          Anyone thinking travel is likely to get even 1/2 way normal in the next 12 months is deluded .

  • Richster says:

    30 Oct30 October 09:16

    While the odds of catching it on a plane may be small, somehow this virus managed to find it’s way from the initial infection to… the whole world! This can only have happened via planes. Those 44 cases have caused worldwide disruptions.
    Obviously we can never know what really happened. With something like 80% of people being asymptomatic, maybe there were a lot more people carrying it on planes… or maybe there is a conspiracy theory to be had about how it got everywhere so quickly.
    Whatever the cause, we (the world) need to get this thing under control so that we (HfP readers) can return to our normal activities. Please urge everyone you know to be sensible about this…. lives are very much at risk.

    • Rhys says:

      30 Oct30 October 09:45

      There’s a difference between transporting the virus on a plane vs in-plane transmission

      • James says:

        30 Oct30 October 10:04

        He didn’t say that.

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        30 Oct30 October 10:16

        Exactly – the test prevents the former and the masks etc reduce, to some extent or other, the latter

    • TGLoyalty says:

      30 Oct30 October 09:52

      That’s non-sense. It happened because travel is accessible it doesn’t mean because it’s caught on planes!!!

      • James says:

        30 Oct30 October 10:05

        He didn’t say that.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          30 Oct30 October 14:15

          “This can only have happened via planes”

          Is complete nonsense.

        • Brian says:

          30 Oct30 October 14:21

          Via planes doesn’t mean the same as on planes. Pretty obvious stuff really.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          30 Oct30 October 21:44

          Yes and you can drive from Italy and Spain to the uk in less than 14 days. In fact planes are not the only way you can get from one place to another within 14 days.

          It’s nonsense to say via planes is the only way this spread.

  • jil says:

    30 Oct30 October 09:17

    This is why there have only been 44 cases tracked to flying — even this number is true, that’s because in europe/us where there are most cases, the government doesn’t or can’t find out where did each case get infected, in many countires in asia it’s a different story, all cases need to be tracked down with sometimes city wide mass testing, and many trace back to very breif contact, shared staircase, shared CT scanner in the hospital etc, even if the nature of ventilation system onboard can reduce transmission, things like queue during on/off boarding can be high risk.

  • Littlefish says:

    30 Oct30 October 16:39

    The IATA calculation was a travesty. Best ignored.
    What this United trial will do, given its the first to pre-test pre-flight, is remove passengers with Covid-19 before boarding the transatlantic. It may be imperfect but its better than not removing any (which is the situation now).
    The evidence is currently pretty good that if you must subject yourself to an enclosed space with strangers then airplanes are generally at the lower end of that risk spectrum, apart from the time factor. This is primarily due to air being adequately filtered and replaced every few minutes.
    Nevertheless, of course, the risk is lowered if no-one (or less) people in the enclosed space are infected.

• Jon says:

  30 Oct30 October 11:21

  I think the answer is yes when this offer has run in the past, but for the Amex offer of “£200 or more, get £50 back”, could this be done on e.g. a £150 room plus use of Spa/dinner at the hotel which pushes total spend to £200+?

  • Rhys says:

    30 Oct30 October 11:39

    If you charge it to your room and pay it in one go yes

• Brian says:

  30 Oct30 October 16:22

  Not sure if it’s already been mentioned, but I’ve just noticed that I have an offer on my Gold Amex – spend £200+ at One Fine Stay and get £200 back. Not quite as good as the offers that have appeared on the Platinum card, but still decent if you can make use of it.

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