Dear Team Member,

First and foremost to our American readers, I wish you all had a great thanksgiving, and as always, I hope this message finds you all healthy and well as we all try and wrap up 2020 for good and look forward to a new year ahead.

Richard Wiese, President of The Explorers Club summarized this in a recent newsletter which I could not have said better “One of the hallmarks of a good explorer is the ability to adapt to a changing environment, in essence, to make lemonade from lemons. Whilst COVID-19 has been an impediment to exploration, it has created an opportunity for us to invest in and engage with our members and audience at a level we never have before, airing programs and events from around the globe, which we commit to continuing.”

This has been the case for our members too. It has been fantastic to engage with you all on livestreams, podcasts and the rest, spreading good vibes and stimulating thoughts before we move onwards with our adventures. Having said that, there are some good news coming out other than vaccines being released shortly.

IATA Travel App is launched

One of the big challenges moving ahead into 2021 is the thought of having to vaccinate the entire world before we can start moving again. With a very high efficiency rate of the new vaccines being released imminently, it is fair to assume once a person is vaccinated, they are free to travel. We were really excited to hear IATA addresses this exact problem in a press release this week where they announced the planned launch of their new Travel app. With IATA coordinating with 90% of the worlds airlines, these news are highly encouraging.

IATA said:

“To re-open borders without quarantine and restart aviation governments need to be confident that they are effectively mitigating the risk of importing COVID-19. This means having accurate information on passengers’ COVID-19 health status.

Creating a digital platform for passengers with information on what tests, vaccines and other measures they require prior to travel, details on where they can get tested as well as giving the passengers the ability to share their tests and vaccination results in a verifiable, safe and privacy-protecting manner is the key to giving governments the confidence to open borders. To address this challenge IATA is launching the IATA Travel Pass.”

In essence, once IATA has had this approved from the worlds governments, travel should be able to resume once people have been vaccinated which is great news.

We attached the full press release presentation in our Knowledge Base where it can be downloaded. Remember - the password is DDERocks

MILES OFFER AND GETTING EXTRA LUGGAGE FOR FREE📦

United Airlines, who is the only end destination airline to get to Truk/Bikini is doing a flash sale on miles TODAY where you get double for your money.

This means you can get for example 100.000 miles for 1750 USD. To put that into context, from most major cities in the USA a ticket to Truk Lagoon is 35.000 miles each way. The United hub from Frankfurt is offering each way to Kwajalein at 50.000 miles.

It is also worth mentioning, the airline is making it a lot easier for new and existing members to climb their loyalty ladder as travel restarts, giving you the chance to work your way up within their system. About luggage, already on Silver level you are getting a free upgrade to 70lb/32kg, on gold its 2 bags of that size and platinum gives you whopping 3x 70lb/32kg bags for free on check-in. These rates work also while booking your itinerary mixed with another star alliance airline, but always make sure to confirm with your partner airline when booking.

You are not required to only fly United to do this as mentioned above. Simply register as a United frequent flyer, and then when you book any flight with Star Alliance, you put your United member number in on the booking, which will then reward you points into the United Account.

BLACK FRIDAY DEALS♠️

We have a whopping 25% off all our merch in the store TODAY. Grab the Black Friday chance and get your DD merch at a great price, just in time for the holidays.

That is us for this week. We hope you got some great plans coming up this weekend but don’t forget, if you are feeling lonely, then we are here to chat Dirty.

Love,

Aron Arngrímsson and the DDE Team