A UCSF doctor, coming home after several weeks in New York City helping coronavirus patients, shared his shocking experience of traveling on a packed flight back to SFO.
Tweets from cardiologist Ethan Weiss went viral Saturday after the doctor posted a photo of a full United flight.
"I guess @united is relaxing their social distancing policy these days?" he wrote. "Every seat full on this 737."
On April 22, United announced it was "limiting seat selections in all cabins, so customers won’t be able to select seats next to each other or middle seats where available." However, the airline later clarified this does not mean all passengers will have an empty seat beside them; due to load factors or passenger requests, it's possible the flight could be full — as it appeared to be on Weiss' Newark-to-SFO trip.
"Though we cannot guarantee that all customers will be seated next to an unoccupied seat, based on historically low travel demand and the implementation of our various social distancing measures that is the likely outcome," United says on its website.
But because of a bevy of flight cancelations, many once-common routes are down to one or two trips per day, leading some flights to fill up.
"We are about to land & I just wanted to say a few things. 1) people on this plane are scared/ shocked. 2) I have no idea why most of them are traveling. 3) I am with a group of 25 nurses and doctors who have been working in NYC hospitals for the past 2-4 weeks. We are coming home," Weiss tweeted Saturday.
In a statement to ABC7, United did not directly address the reasons for the lack of physical distancing, but said: "We've overhauled our cleaning and safety procedures and implemented a new boarding and deplaning process to promote social distancing... and all passengers and employees were asked to wear face coverings, consistent with our new policy."
