June 2, 2020 The Sky Isn't Falling Anymore

The Liberty Gazette

June 2, 2020

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The airline industry needs to get back to business, and we’re seeing the beginning of that, flying the airplanes they had parked as people are increasingly free to travel. Getting fleets back in the air will take time, with limited routes. Before this crisis, U.S. air carriers served around 600 destinations across the country. But some routes may not return, so corporate aviation, charter operations, and personal flying are filling in the gap.

Last week, I got a call to fly for one of my clients, a company in Cincinnati. First, I had to get there. Here’s my experience from my first post-Covid19 airline trip.

Options were not yet great, but I managed to get flights with only one stop. I checked for travel restrictions at the stopovers on each leg.

There were not many cars in extended stay parking at George Bush Intercontinental. But a couple weeks ago, there were none. I was the only passenger in the van to the terminal. The ticketing and check-in area were almost vacant. In the security line, I had to wait—for one person ahead of me. There was no separate TSA Pre-check line, but I was told that if I had “TSA Pre ✔” on my boarding pass, I could have gone through faster. My Global Entry card with TSA precheck didn’t count. I went with the flow.

Going with the flow also means wearing a face mask. The value of the mask is to keep the person wearing it from dispersing their microscopic fluids, not to keep them from breathing in bad stuff. But many travelers were not wearing a mask. Some had gloves and no mask, and some were so swaddled that I wondered how long it took to unwrap so the TSA agent could verify them against their photo ID.

Folks tried to space apart, sprawling across three waiting lounges. But attempts at social distancing can only go so far. The crews asked for distancing in the jetway and on the plane. Few people listened. They still jammed right up to the person in front of them, same as before the pandemic. With planes nearly full, keeping an open space between passengers isn’t possible anymore. Clear plastic partitions between the seats would compromise safety in an evacuation.

At the end of the flights, crews asked everyone to remain seated until the row in front of them was vacated, but some felt that didn’t apply to them.

On the upside, there aren’t many delays. The flight from Houston to Dallas scheduled for an hour and twenty-one minutes took an hour. But then we waited to cross a runway to the gate as ten airliners in a row took to the sky. Hundreds of airliners are still parked, but they are trickling into the air as demand increases.

These oddities may be with us for a while, but as the world begins to move and herd immunity takes over, life will eventually return to a more normal normal.

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