alangore

My September/October hiking tour in Eastern Europe just canceled, so now I will have to cancel my flights. If they have changed radically from my booked itinerary, that will be my excuse to refuse the change and cancel.

lhrsfo

Oddly, I'm thinking of booking a September trip to Italy, but I'll probably drive. Hotels are filling up fast.

More difficult is a November trip to NYC which is looking very unlikely to be allowed.

Bluehen1

My September trip to Portugal has now gone bust as both the US departure and arrival flights have been canceled.

darthbimmer

When this thread started on 7 May I thought my September travel plans were pretty safe. Heck, I thought my early July plans were safe. COVID-19 numbers were going down in the US as in most other countries. By the start of June, though, US numbers were leveling off at too high a level. That called into question our July trip. We cancelled it by 20 June. Our September plans are still booked but as of a few days ago my partner and I agreed it's increasingly likely we'll need to cancel them, too. COVID-19 is trending too hard in the wrong direction in the US to consider any near term travel plans firm.

tmiw

At this point, barring major changes, I'd just assume most domestic travel isn't happening this year. Possibly the first few months of next year, too.

Road trips, however, might be okay. It really depends on the travel route and what you're doing exactly, though.

darthbimmer

For business travel and events like conferences, I agree. Large organizations are understandably making more cautious decisions than many individuals or families might. Plus for a major event the go/no-go decision has to be made months in advance. With infection trends as they are now it's too hard to count on things clearing up until late in the year, at the earliest.

As for leisure travel.... Well, I'm still hopeful that things could clear up enough by September for a personal trip flying cross-country and then doing outdoors activities. We'll continue to monitor the situation. If indicators aren't right then we'll look at replanning the trip from a flying vacation to a driving vacation. As you note, traveling by car is less risky (vis a vis COVID-19) than flying. But depending on the numbers 6 weeks from now even that could be too risky.

Duke787

Thinking we'll likely just not even book our planned December trip to Hawaii. At this point it's starting to seem too risky and not worth tying up the money and going through the hassle of getting it back if/when things prevent us from going.

Likely will just book a house somewhere on the NC or SC coast for a week and call that our 2020 vacation. Rather sad to think about -- at one point we were going to Japan, Ireland and England, Hawaii and that was just the personal travel.

Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that our rescheduled Japan trip in March 2021 stays intact.

pinniped

Only thing I have on the books for September is a long weekend in Charleston, SC with one night in Savannah, GA. Just sort of picked it out of the list of Southwest destinations we've never been to.

WN and Hyatt awards. We'll decide that week whether or not to go. No cash is tied up.

We nixed a Florida trip and were able to rebook the exact same award type (Web special on AA) for Spring Break 2021. That's usually unheard of for MCI-MIA in mid-March. Booked it on the last day of June, given those tickets a free cancel and free redeposit if necessary.

LtKernelPanic

I'm about 95% sure my last planned trip of the year scheduled for September will be canceled. I booked it the last day of June so I don't have to worry about changing it if needed.

OskiBear

September trip already cancelled a while back when airline cancelled flights. Now thinking the last trip on the books (Japan in late-November) is not likely to happen. Sigh...

Zeeb

It's increasingly looking like 2020 is going to be the first year of my adult life when I do not take any flights. I was hopeful a month ago that maybe by Q4 things would be under control enough to fly but not anymore. I'm not sure if I'd book anything before the second half of 2021 right now unless it was 100% no questions asked refundable. I'm definitely looking at a later summer road trip though.

TechnoTourist

I've been booking flights in August and September for domestic travel in Canada. Prices are low and lots of bonus miles on offer.

pinniped

Yeah, I'm willing to book some domestic Southwest stuff and I have a couple of alliance awards booked that have free cancel/redeposit if I choose. But I'm not really to pull the trigger on a ticket with "regular" change fees or redeposit fees.

darthbimmer

I've still got reservations booked for a transcon trip for the second week of September. While I haven't yet canceled it, my partner and I have discussed it again and agreed the chance we'll want to fly coast-to-coast and back with the current state of the pandemic is small. We've begun considering alternate plans for a week of travel. Likely we'll do a driving trip instead of flying. It greatly cuts down the risk of exposure when we're in our own car rather than crowded airports and cramped airplane cabins.

Meanwhile I'm also reconsidering my Thanksgiving plans. I've got flights booked to fly cross-country to visit family-- both hers and mine. Thankfully those flights are cancellable because, yeah, even November is less of a sure thing nowadays.

MSPeconomist

My last conference/business trip was early January and the equivalent meeting for January 2021 has been cancelled. This makes an entire year, and probably also an entire year without flying as my last flights were mid-January. It doesn't look good for Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday travels.

When this first started, I never thought it would be so severe or continue for so long. It seems shocking that USA passports basically can't go anywhere (without a mandatory fourteen day quarantine at best), including to some parts of the USA.