Bags Packed, Sanitizer on, Americans Travel as Coronavirus Worries Grow

Tiffani Ablanedo, 22, of Kearny, New Jersey, and her boyfriend, Colby Cunha, 23, of Newark, were very much not practicing social distancing with one another. But with more and more coronavirus cases being reported across the world, they very much had transmission from strangers in mind.

“If there’s one place I would get it, it is the airport,” Cunha, who coaches youth soccer, said through a mask. “It’s spreading around the world, and the world comes through here.”

Ablanedo, who teaches arts and crafts to children, nodded and then raised her mask to bite her nails, a taboo behavior in this day and age. “I’m worried,” she said, “but not so worried.”

If life is being altered by the outbreak of COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, air travel is one place to watch that change. Passengers with flulike symptoms have been taken from planes and ferried directly to hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised older passengers to avoid long flights, and three Transportation Security Administration officers working at Mineta San Jose International Airport in California have tested positive for the virus. It was not outright panic that New York Times journalists observed inside airports and airplanes in recent days, but something more subtle.

There was a largely unspoken sense of angst that the invisible enemy might be lurking nearby. On any surface. Or perhaps spiraling through the air, projected by a stray sneeze or cough.

Please Put Your Sanitizer On

So much of air travel is rote. Stow the bags. Clasp the seat belts. And now a new order is going out over some public address systems: Put on the hand sanitizer.

Forget about finding any at most airport gift shops, though. Even the communal sanitizer machines installed at many airport inspection stations were frequently running low.

Inside an aircraft, there is palpable worry that the woman over in 16B might be infected. Or the man in 24C. Could the sneeze that just rang out be the one that prompts a team of officials in protective gear to come aboard?

An Alaska Airlines flight Saturday from Newark to Seattle was mostly full, a sign that travelers were not afraid of flying into a focal point of the virus in the United States. Or maybe it just underscored the fact that last-minute tickets were selling for a bargain: $329.

Aboard, several passengers wore plain-looking masks. Then there was the woman in the green hoodie with a colorful lime green and magenta scarf worn bank-robber-style over her nose and mouth.

Through the flight, one young woman lay slumped against the window, shifting restlessly with her eyes closed. Once the plane landed and people were climbing out, she broke out into a shattering cough, which she desperately attempted to quell, looking anxiously and defensively at fellow passengers. Her part of the cabin fell silent.

‘I Promise I Do Not Have Coronavirus’

On a flight out of Atlanta, a passenger from Washington, D.C., who was on his way to a wedding in Monterrey, Mexico, sneezed loudly as he boarded his plane. He gasped and apologized to no one in particular.

“I promise I do not have coronavirus,” he said.

A flight last week from Omaha, Nebraska, where a hospital has treated more than a dozen cases of coronavirus, to Chicago, where a handful of people in the area have tested positive for the illness, was notable only for its ordinariness.

As passengers boarded the mostly full American Airlines regional jet, one passenger struggled violently to wedge an oversize suitcase into the luggage bin. The flight attendant urged anyone who needed to use the restroom to do so before takeoff.

The only mention of face masks, which no one was wearing, came during the recitation about what to do if the cabin lost air pressure.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

“We want to thank you for joining us tonight,” the pilot said over the intercom, just before pushback at 7:19 p.m. “Welcome aboard.”

After takeoff, as the plane gained altitude over Iowa and then descended into Illinois, passengers sipped Sierra Mist, played games on their phones and chose between pretzels and cookies.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

And when one passenger coughed on that flight during the plane’s final descent, no one really seemed to notice.

At the airport in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a woman in the restroom washed her hands for nearly a full minute, carefully scrubbing between each finger until they disappeared under white suds.

Across the hall at the convenience store, a woman bought a rare bottle of hand sanitizer as the cashier coughed.

As the door to an American Airlines flight from Sioux Falls to Chicago closed, a man in seat 4B wrapped up a business call and urged a colleague on the other end of the line to set up a war room on COVID-19 to keep their company’s customers informed on the virus and any possible effects on product delivery. Somewhere over Iowa or Minnesota, a woman offered to share the snack box she purchased with passengers around her. No one took her up on the mini-Clif bar and Milano cookies.

Masks Over Mouths, Noses … and Chins

Masks were largely absent at O’Hare International in Chicago, one of the most trafficked airports in the country. The few people who had masks were using them incorrectly.

One woman waiting to board a flight had on an N95 mask, those recommended for use by health care professionals coming into contact with the virus, but she wore it lowered below her mouth, covering her chin, while she engaged in conversation.

On a flight from Los Angeles to Denver, a girls soccer team took up much of the small plane, and nearly all of the teenage girls were wearing black fabric face masks. One team member passed around a package of baby wipes, and the players wiped down the seats before settling in.

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Airport shuttle buses have become more treacherous, as holding onto metal poles seems to be something to avoid. At Denver International Airport, a man lost his balance as a shuttle lurched to a stop, sending him into another passenger, who let out a groan, through his mask.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .