Flying to LAS when middle seats are open to book

Probably extra good-looking.

 

Can anyone explain seat F26 ?

Looking at the third chart shown above.

 

I am 95% flying to Vegas from NY JFK in 2 weeks. i am on Jet Blue In Mint (JB first class). i feel safe because I am in an individual "suite" . the usual seating configuration in Mint is 2-1-2-1-2 on each side of plane. so when I travel solo, even pre-covid, i always take that single seat , if it is open and the fare is reasonable ....which it is. the downside is I am spoiled by JB Mint and Delta One. there s an actual sliding door that can be closed for those individual pods . it is only about waist high. JB appears to be doing the safety thing right, from what i have read.

 

If they're blocking the aisle seats in Mint, then a window seat is equivalent to a pod (except the seat is slightly narrower). And slightly better because it's further from the aisle.

I booked a window seat in the last row of Mint each way. Normally I'd book a pod.

 

The article didn't explain the "one-off" difference for a few of those individual seats.

You can put in a fake email address and read the story at
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/01/how-coronavirus-spreads-on-a-plane/#close

Keep in mind it was written in March; however, I don't think the principle has changed much.

The study the article mentions is at
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/14/3623.full.pdf

 

That makes total sense. and is a good idea. I think they are blocking the aisle seats

 

Here's a new one:

10 hour flight London to Hanoi on March 2. Seat K5 in business class (red) tested positive, 12 others (orange) in business class later tested positive. No information on masking. Masks were not mandatory at the time.

https://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-coronavirus-spreads-on-long-airplane-flights-2020-9

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/11/20-3299_article?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_333-DM38470&ACSTrackingLabel=Latest Expedited Articles - Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal - September 18, 2020&deliveryName=USCDC_333-DM38470


One note about the chart, the pax in seats D and G in rows 4, 5, 6, and 7 were identified as pairs travelling together. So G might have caught it on the flight and passed it to D later, etc.

 

March 2 I would think there was little to no mask usage.

 

Yeah I've been watching the booking patterns and it's amazing. People seem oriented to the pods and don't realize that booking one means you can have a person behind you, in front of you, and 4 feet away across the aisle. Or it's not a priority I suppose.

Whereas if you book the first row or last row, the seat next to you will be empty, you can only have one person within a row of you and the person across the aisle will be about 6 feet away.

Some flights have 4 Mint seats booked and they're all pods and some have 4 booked and they're in the 4 corners.

I keep flipping my departure date back and forth between a couple of dates to get away from the pod people, lol. I check a couple of times a day to see which flight has the more favorable seating configuration at the time.

 

i'm watching my flight and right now the pod i have ..... no one booked in front of me or behind me or next to me. i will monitor up until i leave and change accordingly

 

I have a flight booked for November and booked a pod because JetBlue has not extended the no middle policy to November. If they do, I'll take your advice and try to book either the first or last row.

 

and i just changed to the last row for both flights ......

 

The single seaters in Mint were always popular even pre-COVID. Single travelers don't want to sit next to someone else while those traveling together just want to experience it for the novelty factor.

 

One tip, because price may come into the equation if you're thinking about changing a flight to get a better seat, and I don't know how precisely pricing out of JFK/EWR will mirror BOS, but:

If there's a small number of Mint seats booked, and someone cancels a seat (this is happening once or twice a week on the flights I'm looking at, the ins and outs are very fluid), and the flight is at least let's say between one and three weeks out, they will reprice it lower, but not until overnight.

So if you're watching the seating chart and you see a good seat open up but the price is more than you want to pay, don't give up on it, check really early the next morning and you may be able to get it for a couple hundred less. If the price doesn't drop overnight in that situation, it may not drop unless another person bails. It takes a good period of looking every day to get a feel for how it works.

One other note, after July, JetBlue went back to Travel Funds only being good for a year from the cancellation date. So if you have a flight booked and you decide to bail, it can be to your advantage to change your flight to some future date with the same price, as kind of a holding pattern, instead of canceling right away. Their free cancel/change policy is effective through 2/28.

 

The science is changing so quickly on this virus that articles from even a few weeks ago can be dated.

Much of the conversation at the beginning of the shutdown focused on surfaces. It's been somewhat proven that your chances of getting COVID from touching an infected surface is much smaller than we originally thought. It's not zero, but it's low.

The method of transmission is mostly through droplets. Droplets only travel so far from a user. 6ft is currently the recommended guideline, but actual travel of said droplets could be much more or less depending on the person. 6 ft gives us something to work from.

The current talk also speaks of time spent around an infected person. Walking by someone in a grocery store is fairly safe. Sitting within 6 ft of an infected person for 15+ minutes could be a reason for concern, hence the restrictions on X groups in an indoor space.

On a plane, you don't have anywhere to get away. If someone is infected in your row or the row behind you, you are likely going to be in some trouble.

We flew Delta in August/Sept to Las Vegas. Middle seats were blocked, any many announcements were made about masks. I felt pretty safe.

I think you have to make your own decision and decide if you feel safe.

A final thought, the vaccine won't keep you from getting COVID. Just like the flu vaccine doesn't keep you from getting the flu. It does reduce your symptoms and increases your likelyhood to survive. The vaccine will likely keep people from dying from the virus. My brother is an anesthesiologist and reminded me of my final point last night.

 

I think if they are not blocking the aisle seats in Mint in November, the pod may be the better option. There is a plastic divider between the rows that extends a couple of inches higher than head level. In that scenario, I would rather be in a pod than have someone sitting right next to me. I have backup flights scheduled for November because of a huge CET promo, but I think I'm going to go next week instead while they're still blocking seats.

I booked pods for the November flights. So what I think I would do in that scenario is book a pod and then switch sometime in the last couple of days or last minute if it looks like you can get a solo seat in rows 1, 3 or 5. If you swap out of the pod in the last couple of days, chances are the next seat sold will be the pod you vacated and not the seat next to you.

I think in November, they probably still won't be selling enough seats to fill Mint, so I expect people will self-select for distance except the aisle seats won't officially be blocked, and you will have some couples traveling together. I don't know for sure, but I bet they let couples sit side by side now in Mint.

As far as booking the last row while they are still blocking seats, I don't mean to sound overly paranoid, just working the angles and probabilities, lol.

Last row pros:

• Nobody behind you
• Further from the aisle
• Nobody from Mint (except person on the other side of row 5) has to pass your seat to get to the forward Mint lav
• Main cabin pax shouldn't need to use the forward Mint lav because there's two lavs in the main cabin and only about 50 pax.
  
• Flight attendant should only have to pass a couple of times

Last row cons:

• 5A is right in front of the Main Cabin lav, so you're gonna hear the whoosh, but most of the pax are booked on bargain fares and stacked in the back, so that shouldn't be too bad

I think the last row in Mint has a slight advantage over the front row because in the front row:

• Everybody in Mint walks by to get to the lav
• Flight attendants will go by more often
• I believe the TV is mounted in the wall, so it's a further reach than any of the other Mint rows

I also think that if you get on board and there's a more favorable seat available, they'll let you switch. Like if you're in 5F and someone booked the 4F pod last minute, but 1F and 2F are open, they'd let you move to 1F.

Wild card is: they are probably offering Mint upgrades at the gate, question is, how much? I don't think they normally discount them much. And a lot of people are booking like $50 - $100 fares so they're not likely to pay $400 - $500 to upgrade. In any case, up until 10/15, they can't plunk somebody down right beside you anyway.

 

Sure, it's a matter of trying to maximize distance if you decide to go.

I'm trying to squeeze this trip in because with seats blocked and mandatory masking (and I have N95s), the risk is at an acceptable level to me, at least the way my flights look this second.

But I think the most dangerous time for Covid since March is going to begin the day a vaccine approval is announced. Not to mention whatever other mishegas is coming up.

 

flights already paid for so the changing from one mint seat to another there is no cost involved.

Thank God for noise cancelling headphones as i am booked in 5A to and fro

Totally agree. on a visit my doctor last week he pointed this out as well

 

Right, if it's the same flight.

But I've been switching between departures on Thurs, Fri and Sat, sometimes because of lower prices and sometimes because the seating chart changed.

I never had a Travel Bank account until May of this year, now I have 32 rows of transactions, lol.

 

All probabilities.... nothing for sure.

Sitting close to an infected person that is a shallow breather may be less dangerous than the coughing guy walking past you, especially if he is facing you. So many variables.