Cancel, Delay or Postpone

We have our first trip to BVI the first week in July. We are going over what we should do. We will be leaving from the West coast which means a 10+ hours of travel, with most of the time in a tube - breathing recycled air and closer than six.

Would love others input.

If you can cancel I would. Things may clear up by July but the stress in the interim would kill you.

Aircraft completely change out the air inside about every 3 minutes give or take. That’s far better than any house, car, office, bus or train. Most newer airliners due recycle about 50% of the air but it goes through hospital grade filters. Air quality is not a issue.
G

Why would you stress out about something in July. It either happens or you will have to cancel your trip. You have little control of the situation.

This is my thought as well. We have a charter scheduled for the end of May. At this point, I am waiting for the word that we CAN’T go and that is when I will reschedule - I know I will get my flights changed with no fees and will hopefully avoid a change fee with my charter company.

I'd keep the reservation - at worst there will still be some covid cases around but things should pretty much be back to normal.

?

Do you mean May or July? I'm thinking May is a real stretch at this point....but we have thought about rescheduling for end of June/early July.

It will be that or we'll tack this one onto the end of a charter we already have in place for November....

We cancelled our July Charter prior to the 90+ day cancellation rule in our contract. Things we considered included the prediction models, which there are many and they change daily. Let's imagine the entire US "peak" happens in April/May, keeping in mind it will have taken 3+ months to climb to this "peak", how long is the downside of this curve? Some reports "predictions" show ups and downs and a possible Fall "peak".

Let's be optimistic and imagine the number of deaths and hospitalizations drop significantly by June/July, we need to remind ourselves that the virus will still be around and a vaccine is months away. We can hope that new medications will be available to control the severe symptoms and keep much of this in check until the vaccine is released, treating it more like a "flu" season. I do believe that we won't be cooped up all summer, but our peace of mind will ultimately decide when and where we travel next.

I cant see BVI opening up without an immigration quarantine until an all clear...I waited until Moorings said done to cancel. Would be glad to go back sooner or just add to October as well...

We recently made the final payment on our July Moorings charter. If the BVI are still locked down then we'll just work with Moorings on rescheduling it, probably in 07/2021. We hope that July 2020 will work out since by then we'll need a vacation for sure. I suspect that airline schedules for July will be a mess which may be an issue.

At some point the BVI will need to open up. The virus is not going away. As the world builds immunity it will become another seasonal illness. The BVI can’t isolate from it forever. The Swedish approach so far appears to be the most successful but gets little press.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sweden-found-solution-coronavirus-103003618.html

Sweden’s per capita death rate so far is higher than the US.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...e-75bb-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.html

I think you have to look at what you define as "success". If keeping deaths at an absolute minimum from the current COVID pandemic than a non Swedish model is probably better. However, if the goal is to not hurt an economy and to develop herd immunity to protect against the next time COVID comes around then I think the Swedish model is good. Its hard because lives are at stake either way and I am glad I just have my little 1st world decisions like how to get back to the BVIs...

I am just looking at this from how the BVI has handled this so far without judgment. If they are successful at their quarantine then they will have little to no herd immunity so they will need to wait until an all clear worldwide or at least make people coming in quarantine for 14 days...

All IMHO

From a data perspective it’s useful to have different models being tried. I think it’s too early to come to any conclusions. There’s so much we don’t know yet.

"Should I stay or should I go..... " Lots' of us in the same boat!

Disappointed, but We have decided to cancel our June 10 trip and start planning for next year.
Virginia has a unnecessary travel ban in place till June 10.... they day we were suppose to depart.

Air Fare - United Air is pushing their vouchers, but are giving full cash refunds.
Boat - We will reschedule with Horizon.
Mafolie - Full refunds.

Stay safely separated everyone.

I think that's the wisest decision at this point. Even if your STATE lifts a travel ban and your airplane does go, AND the BVI is open for visitors by then, that doesn't mean that you won't have to be quarantined or whatever, when you come home.. Regarding United, I would insist on the REFUND. There is no way to know if the airline will still be solvent when this is all over with, whenever that might be.

Here's some eye opening information from the CDC about the regular flu!

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burde...2BhbL-QfKjbw20KTKg_53o6dkaIlJDb2fXw38Yxg

Carol, Funny... I was thinking voucher... but the wife says take the $$. As usual I will just say YES DEAR!

..always the wisest choice, especially when you're 'sheltering at home'.

This is not the flu. According to the stats you linked to, the flu has a fatality rate of 0.1%. If we’re lucky Covid-19 may end up with a fatality rate of 1.0%, ten times higher than the flu.

Might want to check the math on 1%. 3+ million people dead in the USA? I sure hope not.

Might want to check the math on 1%. 3+ million people dead in the USA? I sure hope not.

I think the math TG is using is deaths/number infected

The hard part here is there are many unreported cases that don't involve care. My next door neighbor's parents both had it from their care community and then my neighbor has had all the symptoms and has finally recovered after 2 weeks. It would be hard to imagine his 3 girls or wife didn't catch it and were symptomless before he self isolated in his basement. On the other side 3 doors down the family of 4 about 2 months ago all went through the same symptoms for 2 weeks. Of all this only the original parents were reported and both survived thankfully

Here is a site I follow...pull downs for countries/states

http://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

and of course the classic...

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

To the original question I am more concerned about the counter party risk associated with the charter company which is owned by a private equity company than a US airline which will most likely be bailed out...plus the charter cost is 4x as great.

As of 4/6/2020, the worldwide rate is 5.4%. 64k deaths out of 1.17m confirmed cases.

The problem is only the really sick are getting tested. The vast majority of cases don’t make the stats. I have a friend heavily involved with COVID-19 in Southern CA. They are starting to think they may have had a outbreak there back in Nov and Dec when they had a big uptick in what was reported as flu cases. Irvine CA has a big Chinese population with extensive travel back and forth including Wuhan. Now they seem to be doing well and there is speculation that the area has some immunity. In fact Orange County has had only 14 deaths and 130 people in the hospital currently. The totals should be dramatically higher given the amount of China travel.
G

Agree with GeorgeC1:
Most stats are using "cases" as people who are Tested... Most who are sick and can be treated at home are not tested due to unavailability of testing. So as testing becomes more wide scale, there will be more "Covid19 cases" , but proportionally less death rate.

Also, regarding GeorgeC1 comments about air exchange in airliners(I believe George is /was commercial airline pilot) and the use of HEPPA filters, the spread on planes likely direct droplet (so wearing a mask, especially N95 mask, will be beneficial, and available by then). The more common spread on airlines were probably the previous passenger contaminating the seat/tray/armrests, etc. Airlines are better at this now, and I dare say we will all clean our space upon boarding for quite some time.

There continues to be more evidence that Irvine CA and a good part of Orange County had a serious outbreak of covid19 in Dec/Jan and no one noticed! It was passed off as flu. We now have the ability to do testing to see if someone has had covid19 and from there extrapolate the true numbers who have been infected and the real mortality rate. Attempts to do so have been blocked with the reasoning usually they don’t want to expend the resources. The information could however be critical to how and when we reopen the country.
G

As of today Orange County CA which should have one of the worst outbreaks based on population and travel demographics has 17 deaths and 99 people hospitalized with a population of 13 million people.

Thats because the Governor shut down Cali and did what was supposed to do to protects residents and the people are used to walking around with masks on watched what's happening in their homeland and did as they're told to stay inside.

On the other side if true then I am immune as I had that flu so did my family and most families on Anegada as I brought it home in December, the bit your missing and the major difference is a runny nose....

They are doing some antibody testing in a Germany. Initial results show a much higher rate of infection and a much lower lethality rate than the current posted numbers. Good news I hope!

I would CANCEL any visits to the BVI's until 2021 at the earliest.

bit strong?

If I had my October trip booked I wouldn't cancel...but did push for a charter refund in May as opposed to a credit.

Let's try to be optimistic folks!

I agree, Mal — I am not super hopeful for our end of May trip but we’re just going to plan on 2.5 weeks in November instead!

I just postponed my May 2nd charter with CYOA to November 14th. Fingers crossed things are good to go by then.

There’s logic in what Marie and Steve said due to hysteria especially amongst foreigners.
If someone happened to sneeze C&I will probably remove and Quarantine the person.

Not sure where you're referring to, but if anything it's the exact opposite in the BVI C&I. Probably too lax. Have not heard of a single person being quarantined for anything other than their travel history and that was a well publicized policy. Should not have been any surprises.

Regardless of what you heard the BVI government did say that they’ll quarantine anyone they suspect. We all know they C&I are not doctors so there’s a good chance they’ll screw up someone’s vacation

The BVI will be open to any country that has dealt with and got control of the pandemic properly from May or June I suspect with the radio broadcast last night and information in the gazette.

Hi. Do you have a link to the gazette story?

Sadly...my guess is that the U.S. will not be on that list....but we will continue to hope!!!

My wife and I have our 16th charter in the BVI scheduled for late May and early June. My charter company will allow us to reschedule but I have elected to postpone the decision. Things may change significantly in the nest 6 to 7 weeks. We plan to wear masks and use eye protection on the travel days, if we are allowed to travel. Once the two of us get on the boat, I feel safe.

We are keeping ours in place for late May/June at this point too — but I am thinking that the US response to this pandemic will not encourage them to allow us in...wait and see I guess...and hope for a positive turn.

There has been some legislation put forth to try and identify who is from where...

https://bvinews.com/advanced-passenger-information-legislation-being-introduced/

I think this is the gazette story Peter was referring to. At the very least it has the list of restricted countries (US included).

It will likely require a login which is free and easy to get.

No login necessary, Jason. Thanks. I wonder what percent of BVI tourism is from these countries...

I can say 100% of our guests. I'd guess the top 5 in order are: US (including PR and USVI), UK, Canada, France, Germany

Looks like Quebec is going to start relaxing its economy measures in the next couple of weeks as they are on the downward slope - a number of other Canadian provinces also seem to about to reach that point - Air Canada and WestJet have also rehired most of their staff - the Canadian government is offering a wage subsidy of 75% of preexisting wages and $2,000 a month for any unemployed people.

The US is probably the worst in the world at this point. I'm from the US and I wouldn't let us in if I were them. I have a charter end of June, so we shall see.

Agree ^^^^

This thread's getting a bit unwieldy too navigate but I'll add my 2 cents. This topic of charter trip cancellation has been discussed here and on other forums that I follow. I'm posting as this may be helpful to others.

We also have a charter trip planned in late June - but not to the BVIs - I'm posting here because the BVI forum is charter oriented. Our charter is with one of the largest international management firms. We were fortunate in that the firm modified their cancellation policy a bit for us with some significant urging and special arrangement by me - they've allowed us to defer our full payment to 30 days out. Alteratively, we can cancel at that time with a relatively modest fee. I was happy with that alteration and feel that its reasonable.

Of course, the stated alternative - available to us and everyone - is to simply reschedule later in 2020 or hold a future credit. Unfortunately we can't reschedule (coordinating a few families) and I'm unwilling just to bank a credit as I'm not a lender and that's what banking a credit effectively means - nothing more or less. Its a horrible alternative.

What I find interesting - for whomever is interested - is that the daily rate that we originally booked our trip at - has fallen since our original booking - that's not that surprising really. I think that's relevant and others who are in similar situations might want to investigate that as well. I've not brought this up with the charter firm. Frankly, other than this quick look, I think its somewhat irrelevant as I think its highly unlikely we'll be taking our trip given virus closures, etc. In our case, we had also intended to visit several countries as a part of this itinerary which is also a complicating factor.

Hope my thoughts are helpful to others with trips scheduled in the June/July timeframe.

I just filed a dispute with the credit card company for a May trip as I don't want the counter party risk with a charter credit...

Sorry?? 'counter party risk'???

sorry...the risk that the charter company will declare bankruptcy.

I just want to get cash back and reset as we did with Irma...

OK, makes sense to me.

Hey Bailau - I'm curious as to how this works out for you so if you don't mind reposting the results here, I'd appreciate it.

For what its worth, I'm anticipating significant fallout in the charter mgmt and boat ownership industry - much greater than any issues due to hurricanes, etc - I fully understand your lack of desire to hold a credit - otherwise known as an unsecured loan without interest.

I will let you know...the charter company is not happy about me filing a dispute with the credit card company and wanted me to unwind the dispute to give me a future credit. To be clear the base has been closed in this case so they have cancelled. They have some time to appeal the dispute but really don't have grounds. I was trying to find out if the charter company's business interruption insurance would cover this...and from my view this is no different than Irma.

I also have Jet Blue counter party risk but the flight has not been cancelled yet and Island Bird risk and interestingly a couple of Stubhub suites for Capitals games. I expect Stubhub to declare bankruptcy at some point soon and then will have to work through suite owner or Caps. Issue here is NHL is "postponed" and not cancelled

On the other side I have guests for my beach house in NC that have counterparty risk with me. For them I told them if they cant get to my house due to regulations for whatever reason they will get a full refund and if they want to come back next year that is their choice

I do think the economic 2nd wave will be far worse than the pandemic wave and very much hope and pray I am wrong...

BVI is closed to Sept 2nd for anyone but BVI Islanders and residents per this article..

https://bvinews.com/no-entry-for-lo...OIvQG3JTW4RPwTBKSAK2K27Khm5cxM46GVxjIKkg


"For three months after June 2, only BVIslanders and residents will regain access into the territory. But, Premier Andrew Fahie said access will only be granted under strict conditions."

you need to apply with 7 days notice to be allowed entry on the flights into EIS

I have a charter with Sunsail end of June, which was already rescheduled from April 24. At this point I feel like they should have to give refunds. It's not right if they keep stringing people along with reschedules during hurricane season or far out in the future.

Also shouldn't have to let them keep thousands of dollars as a credit for a year.

It's my understanding that credits for future bookings is a kind of industry standard; flights, cruises, hotels etc; for us all to pull together to keep people & companies solvent for the future. These companies will have a black hole in their income/ trade which is completely irrecoverable.
it's your choice I guess to go for a refund if you want, that's understandable.

It is a very difficult time for everyone. Loss of personal income, risk of charter insolvency, borders/flights closed, risk of future travel and many other factors in these unknown economic and personal health issue times. I agree we all must do our personal best to stick together but we all have individual perspectives. Some may be able to weather the storm while others may not. Multiple crew members also impact charter plans as the need to address multiple perspectives. I will personally do my best to support the industry but struggle with immediate and future plans.