It's Monday, ma. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update. As travel is restricted across much of the world, there are a ton of cheap airfare deals. While you shouldn't fly during a pandemic, you might want to consider booking a short getaway later in the year once things calmed down. Scott McCartney, middle seat columnists for The Wall Street Journal, joins us for what to consider before snagging a travel bargain.
Thanks for joining us, Scott, Sure, good to be with you. We always bring you on, Scott to talk about what's going on in the airline industry and right now amid this time of coronavirus and all that's going on with
the social distancing. I know that the airline industry is taking a big hit, but for us at home, consumers staying home, going on and checking some of these things because everybody's always kind of planning ahead for the future, we're seeing some very very cheap airfare coming up right now. But there's a big question amid kind of this uncertainty. We don't know how long this is all gonna last. Should you book something if you find a really good deal,
Scott help us out with that. I think there are a few rules to consider, a few ways to go about this. But what's interesting is that a lot of these really great deals extend into the fall and even next year. Airlines have pretty well excluded holiday periods, and all the searching I did, you're not gonna find ultra cheap tickets for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but you can much of the rest of the year. And so I would say with domestic trips, for a lot of people, it
may be worth the gamble. I mean, it is a gamble. But if you can find a seventy one dollar fair for a trip in September October, or d fourteen dollar trip across the country, even a two fourteen dollar trip across the country, those are unbelievable prices and you really don't have a whole lot tied up. So the gamble is you may not get to go on the trip right if things are still in flux, And it's kind of like, so what if you buy the tickets now? Airlines have waivers and way so you can just use
that as a credit. But if you do get to go on the seventy one dollar round trip ticket score you win at. I think it's a different proposition for international travel, a lot more complexity there with countries shutting down borders to visitors and really kind of how far do you want to be away from home should there
be a new flare up and things like that. So I don't think it's worth taking the gamble right now and international trips, But I think on some of these really ultra cheap domestic tickets, if you're comfortable with it, it's a good thing to try. What range would you say we should be talking about, because I was looking through the article. There's some Boston to Orlando in mid June for forty one dollars. That's round trip. That's pretty amazing.
There's one for a hundred and seventy seven bucks from New York to Los Angeles that's in early June. New York right now is kind of this epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States, so that might be a little tough. So what kind of time period are we looking at maximize our chances of being safe this and there are several different parameters to the airlines have put out waivers for buying tickets through the end of March. American just extended there's today to April fifteen. I think
those will continue to go out. We just saw the Olympics postponed, and that was July. I think June is very much in doubt. That's a real gamble. But if things do start turning around in April, it could be but I would be really careful about June and even July. So I think the smart booking really comes to August, September, October, even November, um and you know, I think I think by that time we are all gonna be so tired of being cooped up that there's gonna be a lot
of interest in travel. On the other hand, I think the other thing to consider is that there are gonna be cheap prices for a long time to come, and so you don't have to do this now. You can wait, and there are gonna be bargains to Orlando in late summer early fall for a while. I think airlines are gonna have sales to get people traveling again. There's gonna be a lot of reluctance to start traveling again, and so they'll try and sort of prime the pump that way.
But also What you have to remember is they're pulling out all kinds of capacity from their schedules. You know, of international flying, we're seeing the potential of even for a temporary period, grounding virtually all domestic flying. So as that capacity comes back into the schedule, it's like new flights to everywhere. There are no bookings for those flights. To get the bookings back into those aircraft cabins, they're gonna have to offer really deep discounts in order to
fill seats. And one of these suggestions that you made in your piece, which I thought was pretty good, is consider multiple short trips. You know, nobody's gonna go for this big three week global adventure, especially with the uncertainty and kind of other countries, you know, you know how
they're treating their travel restrictions and whatnot. So maybe some of these shorter trips we can get aways, the tiny things that you can handle easily can still be close and if they do get canceled or something, you haven't
put so much into it. I think that's right. And even when you're on the trip, you have a ticket home in in a relatively short period of time, right, So go to an island for a couple of days and if all of a sudden things turned and you've got to get home, well you've got a ticket to get home pretty quickly, and then just turn around and repack and go off to a mountain somewhere or something like that. That I think you could have a lot of fun with multiple short trips where you're never really
in danger of getting stranded somewhere. You also mentioned don't buy anything that has cancelation penalties right now. I know a lot of them are waving that, so hopefully you can get in on that. But one thing I wanted to ask is a travel insurance what do we make of that during this time right now? Don't make anything of it because it's no good. Almost all standard policies have an exclusion in it for pandemic. Travel insurance companies have very clearly said the danger of coronavirus is own,
so they're not covering it. It's the same philosophy that if if your house is on fire, you can't run out and get homeowners insurance right because you know the house is on fire, so now you know what the danger is. Just like the hurricane is bearing down on the island, you can't run out and get insurance. You've got to do it before, so standard insurance offers no coverage in these situations. The only travel insurance you could consider at this point is what's called cancel for any reason.
That's more expensive. The coverage of your losses is less. But the reality is that you're really not gonna have a whole lot of losses. If you're careful about protecting yourselves. Airlines will at worst give you a voucher for the value and in many cases give you a refund. If you make sure that your hotel is refundable, your tour, your whatever you've got packed in there, even expensive Safari's or whatever. You protect yourself that way, you don't need
travel insurance. Scott McCartney, Middle seat columnists at The Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Sure great to be with you. Oscar. I'm Oscar Emiris and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For more top news stories, you can catch me on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you get your podcast