Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/30/here-are-the-airlines-halting.html
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I didn’t see AirVirus among the list…
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Qantas. Qantas never crashed.
Of course, they also fly from other locations (like DFW) to China. The AA pilots are currently suing to stop the rest of the flights, and probably pilots from other airlines will soon do the same.
I suspect that some airlines are cutting back only as many flights as the number of Boing 737s they can’t deploy.
Why not going on a strike?
It seems the perfect opportunity to do that, and the general public would support them.
It strengthens the union power and increase the workers solidarity, instead of relying on an outside organization that would get a share of the public approval for forcing the airlines to think more on their employees than on profits.
I think I am missing something. 170 dead and 8000 infected still doesn’t seem to compare to influenza, but we don’t halt flights during flu outbreaks. Is it because its spreading very quickly? Or is it because the flu is seen as inevitable/ongoing so we can’t stop the world because of it? (I got my flu numbers here, which were actually way worse than I was expecting: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html )
It seems like it is a stronger strain than the common flu, but without losing much of the spread potential, ebola for example is more deadly, but cannot spread as fast, making it less threatening in the long run.
I’ve seen an updated graph which included the new corona virus, but I couldn’t find it again (IIRC, the corona virus would be below the SARS, at the 2.5 % mortality rate):
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54455b9decad0420067efb7b-1276-848/1276_microbescope4.png
As any diseases, it has an exponential growth, and the current figures might develop to look like a common flu or the Spanish flu, the death rate looks closer to the latter, but it is still to soon to judge it.
And, another problem is that the past diseases, like SARS and H5N1, can only be judged considering all the effort employed to try to reduce its spread, and what looks like a unjustified panic might have been a plague averted.
It is probably illegal under US labor law. There are limited situations under which the NLRA recognize strikes, the only one which might cover this is “Unfair labor practice”, but I think asking pilots to do their normal jobs would not count as that. In the US, if you’re a union member and you strike for an unrecognized reason, you can be fired and get no protection from the NLRA.
Thanks for the clarification.
I forgot that the US is more averse of unions than other countries.
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We’re terrible. However, I’ve been out on the picket line a few times, and if the pilots can solve this with lawsuits it might be easier on them. Fortunately, while labor action is hard in the US, lawsuits are dead easy.
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