“The COVID-19 pandemic has struck no industry harder than aviation and the airlines.”
I think the bar and restaurant industry would disagree.
Clothing retailers as well - Macys, Nordstrom, etc. are bleeding massive red ink (on-line sales don’t come close to making up the difference) and have laid off most of their employees. The women’s shoe company DSW furloughed over 80% of its workforce in one day.
I can sympathize. My wife and I were in Buenos Aires at the end of March. It was supposed to be a couple of days visit on route to Ushuaia to join a ship for a cruise in Antarctica. This was a bucket list event for us.
It was unbelievable how fast things changed. In 3 days it went from “the cruise is still on you have nothing to worry about“ to everything is cancelled get back ASAP. We waited 5 days in Buenos Aires before we were able to get a seat on the second to last scheduled flight out.
Some personal take always
A good travel agent is worth their weight in gold when the poo hits the rotary oscillator. The people who figured they can save a bit of money by
booking on line were totally screwed when they tried to rebook.
The embassy folks were awesome. This is why IMHO having competent people in an adequately funded government matters. I hope some of the people screaming loudest about how the government had to save them might also think about whether they want to support politicians that so fervently proclaim to “drown the last bit of government in the bathtub”
Indeed, we were fortunate to have a good travel agent in Lima even though we were travelling individually on a trip they set up. We knew they were good from last year’s trip but this performance was incredible. The Embassy? Those who remained and organized our departure, and the US military involved in getting us out, were awesome. Many left on the first flight out, before the rest of us. Some of that makes sense but the Embassy was terribly short-staffed with nearly 10,000 US remaining in-country. The US response (perhaps mostly from senior officials in State and above) was slow and the selecting of people and filling of flights was poorly administered. We were grateful for the chartered UAL flight out. Sorry to hear your trip got truncated!
It is no secret that the current Republican administration has actively worked to defund, shrink and marginalize the State Department. With almost half of all senior State appointments either empty or run by an acting administrator I don’t think it should be surprising that the response to repatriating stranded citizens was shambolic
On my flight home I ended up chatting with a cruise relief pilot who was dead heading home after operating the trip down. He was a new hire on a reserve bid. Looking where things are going his furlough is guaranteed, and there now seems to real questions as to whether a near permanent reset of the airline industry to a smaller footprint is happening.
I am afraid that for all practical purposes his airline career is over before it had barely started…
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Geez…this whole thing reads like some over-privileged whiner, whining. Maybe a few more sentences about “world-class” Lima and the ability to “pay for it in advance” will bring comfort to the 20 million people here in the U.S. that have lost their jobs, untold millions that have lost their dreams, and the tens of thousands that lost their lives.
100% out of touch.
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hmm, what parts of the State Department are you referring to that are supposedly defunded and actually impacted this writer’s experience in any way.
I am looking at State’s data for both headcount and budget for the Consular Affairs Overseas Support areas from FY16-19 and don’t see any delta. Those areas are basically flat. What numbers are you looking at?
I get it, you hate Trump and assume this has something to do with it. My experience at a sub-agency of State is that our headcount grew under the supposed hiring freeze in this administration.
In my experience, during most crisis , the SOP is to rely on TDYs from other posts to help in these kind of over-stretched situations at post . I was in Indonesia and they had a ton of people help out from other posts temporally during a tsunami. That model of flexing manpower obviously doesn’t work in a world-wide crisis. not sure how this has anything to do with this administration in particular, this is how embassies have worked since 2001 that I know of. Again, if you hate Trump, this is his fault I guess. But again, I can’t find these defunds in this area in publicly available data.
I would not agree with this president on much but knowing these people, I am not going to try and say cutting the State department is the worst thing I ever heard. I’ll spare you the stories of my colleagues shipping cargo containers of Honey Nut Cherios and Tide for their wife and kids as essential goods to post on a C130 at $23k and hour billed back to DoD during a crisis. Truth me told, none of us could find a real job. I’m sorry my fellow FS1s and GS15s, but your PhD in International Affairs from American university is only valid at the gov’t.
Not sure what level of services this writer was expecting. I like to travel (40 odd countries on Uncle Sam’s dime and another 20 on mine) but when I am in Mongolia or PNG on my own nickel, I don’t write a sad story about the embassy not helping me when there’s a crisis, which there occasionally is in life. If you can’t deal with, stay home
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Just to add some numbers and comments on State staffing and competence…
“The number of foreign service officers declined from 14,029 in early 2017 to 13,592 by the end of 2019, according to State Department data published by the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents foreign service officers.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-state-department-blocks-new-diplomats-foreign-service-officer-classes/
-And-
“The State Department’s mission is compromised by “staff shortages, frequent turnover, poor leadership, and inexperienced and undertrained staff,” the department’s inspector general warned in a new report.
“Workforce management issues are pervasive, affecting programs and operations domestically and overseas and across functional areas and geographic regions,” the watchdog reported Wednesday.
The 16-month hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration in early 2017 continues to affect operations and morale, the IG found, noting that department officials anticipate it will take until 2021 to fully recover from its impact.
All 38 bureaus and offices that responded to the IG’s survey and 97% of the embassies and consulates reported that the hiring freeze had either a somewhat negative or very negative effect on employee morale and welfare. “Employees told OIG that the hiring freeze contributed to excessive workloads, and the lack of transparency about the objectives intended to be achieved by the hiring freeze caused some to be concerned about losing their jobs,” the IG reported.” Published January 2020
https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2020/01/watchdog-finds-serious-staffing-and-leadership-problems-state-department/162621/
I’ll note that the Ambassador was caught out of Peru when the country was closed, he traveled out of Peru to the US in February for a medical procedure. Experience and top-of-mission presence suffered. Most of the Embassy staff and dependents were airlifted out on the very first flight, what remained was a skeleton crew and I was particularly moved by the male spouse of an Embassy employee who I talked with as we waiting on the bus for evac…he did it because it was right, for no compensation. There was a disconnect between public statements by the Secretary (you should come home commercially and we’re going to end any help) and the Embassy staff (trying to do a good job in getting us home) for most of the second half of March and into April. Commercial flights are still forbidden, today, as is intra-country travel. Fortunately, the US government realized that getting US citizens and permanent residents out of Peru was in our national interest. I suspect that the competence to do so was lacking and so it took longer…and the job still isn’t done.
You have to be out of your mind to rely on anyone to come running to your rescue while outside of the U.S. for any reason whatsoever. Nothing short of plain brain dead. You travel outside of the U.S., you deal with the consequences. Don’t ever think, just because you’re a U.S. citizen that affords you some sort of privilege. It doesn’t.
I couldn’t agree more. Sounds like the typical spoiled-rotten, self-absorbed millennial.
I read this entire article waiting for some sort of twist or something to make this a worthwhile read but no, our writer remained self-absorbed and quite spoiled throughout the entire duration. I’ve worked hard to be where I am and do what I love and have always remained humble but also aware that I’m blessed. This article makes me want to gag. Escape from Peru? Give me a break! Do you even think about how that may sound to someone from Peru? Of course you don’t Scott. You should be grateful to have even had the opportunity bud. Why is this even posted? Avweb you guys need to proofread your content!
“All went to hell in a handcart…” all things considered, You guys were pretty lucky and fortunate. I’m sorry that this global pandemic caused the finale of your wonderful vacation to go off the rails, but this read is such utter garbage. It’s almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t literally have people dying over the same exact thing you decided to write an entire personal blog about. How self-indulgent and tone deaf this author is. Thankfully I know that this is not the norm for this wonderful website and it’s community. There’s probably a reason the author only has this one article. Stay safe everyone!