Perhaps apropos of the moment, the Great Depression gave us at least two touching tributes to touching. Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach wrote “The Touch of Your Hand” in 1933 for the stage production of Roberta. In 1936, the relatively unknown Ray Noble adapted a tune called “The Touch of Your Lips,” which became a popular hit for a young Bing Crosby.
My favorite rendition of the latter song is by Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, on a marvelous duet record from the 1970s:
Bill Evans & Tony Bennett “The Touch of Your Lips”
In the spring of 2020, there is no question on the matter of touching of lips. Strictly forbidden. The touching of hands? Here we have room for discussion. A reprise of the Great Depression may hinge on the touch of our hands.
The aviation and travel industry, demolished by a viral threat and the fear factor summoned by it, turns its attention to the psyche of the traveler. Our goal has broadened from safe passage to the more nuanced confidence in safe passage. In this edition, the Almanack focuses on the current fixation on touching. More to the point, not touching.
In airports and airplanes, there have always been purists – Purellists – among us. Although not widespread in the BC ( Before COVID ) epoch, some travelers carried small containers of hand sanitizer, with which they furiously disinfected themselves and surfaces throughout their journey. These early adopters indicate a latent germophobic element in air travel, a latency that has now exploded into an insistence on “touchless travel.”
Respiratory viruses can be transmitted directly and indirectly. Direct transmission would be a contagious person expelling microscopic aerosol particles on you, which you then ingest. Such are the unpleasantries of the moment. Indirect transmission would be contact with a contagious person or a contaminated object, via hands typically, that results in the virus being received by mucous membranes that are most accessible in the eyes, mouth, and nose. The probabilities of contracting a virus are much greater for the direct method, a conclusion favoring mask-wearers.
Touching, by itself, is not the problem. Touching the face with contaminated fingers is the problem, aside from people expelling airborne particles on you. Persistent hand-washing and hand-sanitizing enthusiasts, previously viewed as mildly neurotic, should now be emulated as the saintly.
But as a practical matter, face-touching cannot be easily remedied; thus, we are left to minimize touching, period. In an airport, there are some very immediate ways to do it that require minimal effort.
Every airline offers a mobile application. Not only does it greatly facilitate easy conductance through the airport, the airlines love having you use it! Most carriers anticipate the gradual elimination of kiosks and the reduction of ticket counter and baggage induction space, coronarama or not. If you are not checking bags and travelling domestically, use of the mobile app alone eliminates many opportunities to touch things, like kiosks, readers and boarding passes.
For $85, the TSA’s PreCheck program further improves your airport experience and enhances your new touchless life. Unless the airport is using the TSA’s Automated Screening Lanes (ASL), PreCheck allows you to squirt through screening while avoiding bins, trays and dog-bowls. The secret is not removing shoes, liquids and electronic equipment. Just chuck the phone in your carry-on bag, toss the bags on the belt and you’re good.
It is one of the strange turnabouts that the pandemic has made the ASLs, which significantly improve throughput but also force bin use, unattractive.
Bag-checking is slightly more challenging because it is primarily a finger pecking kiosk operation. However, airlines and airports are considering touchless kiosks for bag-tag printing. United Airlines announced that it is installing kiosks that allow use of the mobile app to enable control of the tag printing. Others will quickly follow suit. And if you are unable to find a way to not check bags, there is the vintage way of doing things – euphemistically, Concierge Service – by asking the friendly masked and gloved agent to print, affix and prepare your bag for travel. Still works.
The retail industry was already on its way toward a cashless future BC. There are plenty of airport merchants now that offer payment by mobile app or a form of digital wallet which work on low-power Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. NFC is touchless; signing up for digital wallet applications is easy and is another immediate way to increase touchless travel.
Some industry factotums are proclaiming the use of face recognition technology, often using the imprecise term “biometrics,” as a touchless solution. The Almanack takes no exception with this recommendation, as some forms of face recognition are viable and already in commercial use ( Almanack on Face Recognition ). However, it is important to understand that widespread availability of the technology for non-international travel is on the horizon but not arrived yet.
Delta Airlines’ “fully biometric” Concourse F in Atlanta is instructive on how the process may eventually unfold. There are jurisdiction and privacy issues still to overcome before there is widespread adoption. Face recognition-based travel is probably in the one-year-plus timeframe.
The Touchless Truth in aviation is that for the immediate future, returning to confident travel will require accelerated use of mobile technologies, incorporation of near-field communication to yoke fixed and mobile devices, and a healthy renewal of interest in risk-based screening. With this and a modicum of attentiveness by passengers, it is possible to keep touching to a minimum in our airports.
Poor David's Almanack 