More airlines are taking extra steps to make flying at least a little bit safer for now by creating more contactless ways to handle routine tasks, as well as making it easier to sanitize passengers and planes.
Alaska Airlines, for example, has modified its mobile app and technology to allow printing bag tags without having to touch the kiosk, to get boarding passes by text as well as through the app and to allow agents to scan boarding passes from six feet away. Passengers can also pre-order and pay for in-flight food using the app with a stored credit card.
Japanese airline ANA is taking the hands-free idea a step further with a new door it’s installing on its lavatories; the door, seen above, can be opened with a push of the elbow on the lock and then on the door; inside the bolt is also elbow-friendly. ANA, by the way, won last year’s Skytrax award as the ‘cleanest airline in the world.’
Delta may be mounting a challenge to that; in addition to still blocking middle seats, which it has made an advertising point of, the airline is doubling down on clean hands with handwashing reminders and sanitizer stations mounted on the wall at airplane lavatories and boarding doors.
And, on the airplane-cleaning side of things, Boeing has introduced a new high-efficiency UV-based sanitizing wand for cleaning and sanitizing cabins between flights; it can also be used on the cockpit and its instruments.
