Air Travel During COVID – Tips for Your Domestic Flight (Part One)
After nearly two months under the “stay at home” COVID quarantine, I recently had to travel via plane from Atlanta to Washington DC to help out with some family child care issues for a while. My last flight prior to that was on March 19th, when the U.S. was already shutting down. On that day, I was on an A320 which ordinarily seats about 150 passengers – but there were less than 30 people on board; in the 48 hours prior to that Delta flight, I was upgraded from economy to economy plus, and then to first class. But otherwise everything was still pretty pre-COVID normal – no middle seats were blocked; plenty of people sat next to each other; flight attendants were still providing full beverage service; and, while the plane was clean, there was no sense of heightened disinfecting protocols being applied.
When I next went to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport on May 10th, and when I returned from Reagan National Airport (DCA) to ATL on May 20th, it was a very different experience. For those of you contemplating travel in the near term, here is what is different now:
Empty Departures Area at Atlanta Airport
1. No more crowds, or practically anyone at all – at the world’s busiest airport (by passenger traffic), on a Sunday night, ATL was almost empty, ALL of it. No traffic getting to the airport, no traffic at the departures area, and very few people in the terminal, at the TSA checkpoint or anywhere else. There were only about 20 flights going out from ATL after 6 pm that evening, and there was only one international flight (to Paris – a Delta representative told me that route had just re-started but was only departing once daily). Ten days later, DCA made Atlanta look like a bustling metropolis, with even fewer flights. Don’t plan on getting an Uber/Lyft easily either – there is a long wait for those. Cabs were easily available at DCA when I landed there, but had few takers. Like me, most people seemed to have family or friends picking them up so as to avoid the risks of other transportation. In DC, subway service is limited – by the time I landed there late on a Sunday night there was no rail service. If you are planning on public transportation wherever you are traveling, make sure you check in advance to see what may or may not be operating.
Taxis at DCA Airport
2. Expect and adhere to distancing at TSA but there is no TSA Pre-Check – TSA at ATL had social distancing spacing widely noted on signs in the waiting lines and marked on the floor, so that the few people at security were standing in line at least 6 feet apart. Strangely, neither CLEAR nor TSA Pre-Check were open. That seemed particularly odd as CLEAR would have allowed me to go through security without touching a screen (instead using the eye recognition function) and TSA Pre-Check would have meant no need to remove shoes and electronics from my bags. In a time where touching bins and conveyor belts is something you want to avoid, it seems like Pre-Check would be a best practice. When I flew back on May 20, DCA had CLEAR checkpoints open but still no TSA Pre-Check. Interestingly, neither airport’s TSA screeners asked me to remove my face mask so that they could look at my face to compare to my ID. Everyone in line at TSA, as well as the TSA personnel, were wearing masks at both airports.
3. But not everyone will be wearing masks inside the airport after you pass security – Plenty of people at both ATL and DCA were mask-free once they passed through TSA security. Airline employees in uniform, and airport employees all pretty much consistently wear masks but about half of the passengers do not. Some people (including me) were wearing gloves as well. In general, people are socially distancing, and sitting several seats away from each other in boarding areas as well.
Social Distancing Signs at TSA
4. No one looks like Naomi Campbell – While the supermodel adopted a full-body wrap approach early on (https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/naomi-campbell-coronavirus-precaution-outfit/index.html) I did not see anyone at either ATL or DCA looking like a walking plastic burrito. I suspect most people would also be very uncomfortable in a hazmat suit for even a short flight; the airplane can be warm, and touching the plastic doesn’t make you feel much safer either.
5. Everyone on the plane is wearing a mask but may remove the mask during the flight – As of when I first departed from ATL on May 10, the airlines were already requiring all passengers to wear masks on the plane. Everyone on my flights complied with that, even smaller children whose parents had fitted them with masks. That said, the airlines have also announced they are not going to get into arguments with passengers if they take off masks in flight. Frankly you have to take off the mask, albeit briefly, if you want to have a sip of water, or eat a snack. It’s unrealistic to expect, even on a shorter flight (ATL to DCA is less than 2 hours) that you will be able to keep the mask on without ever removing it. This is true especially if you have a close fitting mask. I was wearing a KN95, which is better at blocking particles but very uncomfortable. You quickly understand why such masks are painful for healthcare workers wearing them all day long. Your breathing is restricted, and the loops around your ears can tug uncomfortably as well. I took off my mask to drink some water – you also feel dehydrated while wearing a face covering like that for an extended time. In short, the mask was probably the most disruptive and difficult part of each flight/airport experience for me.
Next up . . . limited food and sundry store options in the airport, and what to do for a bathroom break. Plus, what should you do about your luggage? And how about that dreaded middle seat?
-Laura Flippin
The top photo is by A.Savin (Wikimedia Commons · WikiPhotoSpace) - Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55243588
