So people are back to flying already. Wow!

Why "Wow!"?

DEN is fairly active unlike LAX

Wow, that is impressive. IAH has been pretty damn busy, with much more crowded status boards.
Maybe these rumors of LAX going away as a hub will come to fruition.

From May 19th-June 30th united has pulled Non-Rev pass privileges if the flight has a load factor of more than 70%.

A step in the right direction to make passengers feel more comfortable IMO.

Well these days there are apparently a small number of people who really need to fly, enough to fill a lot of those fairly small number of planes at the gate. If they've downsized to the point where the demand will fill the planes, good for them. But all my flying - and I was hoping to do at least another half dozen trancons this summer - is discretionary, and I'm sure not in a hurry to get back on a plane (last flew 23 March, through EWR, eeww). Empty middle seat and masks was perking my interest, but the pix we've seen of packed planes, and hearing that crew won't really do anything to make pax keep those masks on in flight, may well mean that I take none of those flights in 2020. I may be overly cautious... but I also fly a heck of a lot (MM status) more than many of the folks the airlines will need to become anywhere near solvent. Really, I crave the travel, but not enough to risk my life.

From a PR perspective, this was a must. UA is getting hammered in the press for "playing with semantics to mislead customers" (per a column in the Guardian). I guess 70% has become a magic number for some reason.

I'll be curious how this plays out with my flight from HNL-SFO on May 30. I've been watching the flight daily and it magically goes from lightly booked (all buckets at "9" and pretty open seat map) to an average of 30 stand by's clearing each day. And of course FC goes from 14 seats blocked at T-25 to booked full at push back. My plan was turn down the UG and grab 3 seats in Y (based on load), but by T-1 those Y seats got filled. Wouldn't be flying at all if the job didn't mandate this particular trip. Could be interesting.

Flew twice through Denver last week. At 5PM almost every gate in B was occupied and they were using gates in A for both 50 seaters and a couple of regular gates on the west side of A. Flights were 50-70% full and they required masks to be worn.

Interesting that AA is doing exactly the same thing as UA wrt filling middle seats, but is not getting anywhere near the public lashing that UA is enduring. Not sure if DL is actually doing what they say sans the "small print".

Delta and AS are blocking seats, and AS has gone so far as to block all aisle seats on it's RJ (basically flying at 50% of capacity. They have correctly (IMHO) determined that what they will gain in customer loyalty as well as people feeling comfortable to fly again long term far outweigh the short term loss of a few extra seats sold. No reports I have seen of unrelated people getting put into middles on either airline. (That you see three people in a row together does NOT mean Delta is assigning middles to unrelated people like UA and AA are)

But Delta - like AA and UA appears to have told their crews not to get into fights over masks. That does dissuade me from flying on Delta. Some dude who think it's his right not to wear a mask in confined spaces is the last person in the world I want to sit near. So for now I am booking AS > DL, and not going to book UA or AA at all. I will feel safe flying Delta when they divert a flight and have the non-mask wearer pulled off by the cops and then charged and sued for the cost of the divert.

Is UA getting hit harder than AA for some real reason no. But the photo that went viral and the story behind it - medical personal complaining UA was packing people in middle seats on EWR-SFO - involved UA, so UA is getting top billing. This is just another e.g. (doa, UA breaks guitar, sizing the assigned paid for seat from the women flying from Hawaii's kid and making her kid sit on her lap) of why in the social media age stupid actions by airlines result in outside impact.

I - and everyone I know in the medical field - believe that not filling middle seats AND mandatory masks are the minimum given the level of transmission going on in the US to be willing to fly. Some disagree, some think the virus is a hoax. But about 65-70% of the public supports social distancing, and those who are most likely to travel (educated professionals, upper income people) at this time are even more supportive of social distancing. So an airline that is an outlier and defies what the public thinks is safe is likely to get hammered - and UA has been - but it is also likely to drive away bookings.

Post 2012 UA has been basically my last choice when I had options, with my buying being VX>D>AS> foreign carrier > AA/UA. AA and UA have traded placed over that period. But while a better routing, better a/c, much better price could cause me to guy a ticket despite what I did not like about UA, what I consider safety is just not negotable. What United is doing is the equivalent in my mind to deciding that they were just going to cut the maintenance budget in half, and decide to fly with more broken systems.

I'm not currently flying, because I have no desire to wear a mask. As soon as the rule is repealed, I look forward to getting on a flight. If you'd like to deplane because you're seated next to me, that's your business.

Do you really believe AS would divert a flight because somebody took their mask off?

I don't think the virus is a hoax. I completely disagree that having an empty middle seat is going to make any practical difference. It's health theater. And I don't really think that putting a cut-up T-shirt in front of your face is going to help much either.

If people were avoiding United due to its social distancing policies, the planes wouldn't be crowded in the first place.

That is outrageous.

Wife and kids just finished DEN-SFO and said boarding was about as good as it gets. Some guy initially refused to wear a mask and GA made it clear he wasn�t flying without one.

Was the flight full or were there some open middles?

Good that she stood her ground - bad that for every GA like her, there are probably 50 more who would let this jerk on board, and judging from the number of maskless passengers on social media photos, I suspect my analysis is right

mostly empty. She said she has a empty middle row for sfo-HNL. The kids are enjoying the window and aisle seats next to her. Maybe Sunday isn�t representative of the new normal but she is happy.