American Airlines is expanding its COVID-19 pilot pre-flight testing program in an effort to get more international flyers in the sky. Customers traveling from New York, Los Angeles, or Dallas to London will now be able to participate in the three-test procedure as the carrier tries to determine how much testing is really necessary to keep people safe.
Rhett Workman, the managing director at American Airlines for Europe and Asia-Pacific operations, conceded that asking volunteers to complete multiple stages of testing can seem heavy-handed, but said that the data is needed to prove a larger point.
"Our three-test regime is a bit cumbersome. Again, three tests, multiple days in between, that's asking a lot of our volunteers to go through that test, but we are collecting that data to demonstrate that the first test, the pre-departure test, is appropriate," he said.
When it comes to travel and mitigating the spread of the novel coronavirus, Workman believes pre-flight testing is the only way to be sure that the virus isn't boarding passenger flights and could be enough to alleviate fears of spread for travelers.
"We hope the results in this trial will ultimately prove that no quarantine is required," Workman told Cheddar.
The pilot program calls for customers to take a PCR (nasal swab) test at least 72 hours before a scheduled flight. Then another test is administered upon arrival in London, and customers would receive another self-administered test that they can take 72 hours afterward.
While the program looks promising for extended stays, quick trips across the pond are not ideal as coronavirus guidelines are still being observed.
"It doesn't eliminate anyone from the quarantine requirements on the UK end and as it currently stands, that's still a 14-day quarantine upon arrival in the UK regardless of any testing result," Workman added.
American Airlines is already running a coronavirus pre-flight testing program for passengers flying from the U.S. to the Caribbean and parts of Latin America, where Workman says the goal of the program is being achieved.
"We've tested, to date, over a quarter of a million customers traveling from Dallas and Miami to around 30 destinations in the Caribbean and northern rim of Latin America and all of those customers arrived with negative results, into those countries," Workman said.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
