When you’re ready to fly again, RDU says it is taking steps to help keep you safe
It could be a long time before people are flying like they were before the coronavirus outbreak, but Raleigh-Durham International Airport says when passengers do return it wants them to feel safe and comfortable.
RDU on Thursday announced steps to reduce the chances people will pass the virus to each other at the airport. They include increased cleaning and sanitation, urging everyone to wear a mask in the terminals and reminders on signs, digital boards and floor decals to keep 6 feet apart.
“We want to make sure we have all those things in place so when the customer comes back, they see something different and they feel confident they can fly and they can travel,” said RDU president Michael Landguth.
Social distancing has not been a challenge at RDU or other airports around the country. The number of travelers flying in and out of RDU plummeted more than 96% because of the coronavirus pandemic. In all of April, only 40,000 passengers came through the airport, Landguth said.
“Last year, on a given day, we would do 40,000 a day,” he said.
RDU has seen a slight uptick in May but traffic is still down more than 90%. All but a handful of shops and restaurants in the terminals are closed, as are the park-and-ride lots. The massive parking deck between the two terminals is at about 5% capacity, Landguth said.
All 10 airlines at RDU are operating at least one flight a week from the Triangle except for Air Canada. The number of seats available to passengers is down 83% this month, Landguth said; airlines have scheduled only about 40 departures a day, a third of them leaving before 8:30 a.m. At times, the airport looks deserted.
When people resume flying, they will find plastic sneeze guards at ticketing, check-in and information counters and new boarding procedures, established by the airlines, to discourage crowding. RDU has installed dozens of hand sanitizing stations in the terminals and has another 80 or 90 on order.
All major airlines, including American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit, Southwest and United, are requiring passengers and crew to wear masks on board; Allegiant provides single-use masks for passengers, but doesn’t require that they be worn. If you forget to bring a mask, they are being sold in stores on the passenger concourses.
The full requirements and procedures for curbing the spread of coronavirus vary with each airline, and RDU recommends checking your carrier’s website before leaving for the airport. Frontier, for example, will begin taking temperatures of all passengers and airline employees starting June 1 and will forbid anyone from boarding with a temperature of 100.4 or higher.
Landguth said airports have asked the federal government to establish national rules and procedures for masks and passenger health screenings in the terminals. In the meantime, RDU has opted to “highly recommend” people wear masks without requiring it, he said.
“We are not going to police people,” he said. “We would simply ask them to consider the impact they could have on others.”
Recovery will likely take years
With the reduction in traffic, RDU has postponed the planned move of Allegiant and Spirit airlines to Terminal 1, which was to take place April 1 to help alleviate crowding in Terminal 2. Landguth said the airport will revisit the move in September.
As North Carolina and other states lift stay-at-home orders, there are signs that people are starting to fly again. The Transportation Security Administration screened an average of 228,223 passengers a day nationwide in the week ending Wednesday, up from a low of 87,534 passengers on April 14.
But that’s still a small fraction of the nearly 2.3 million people who passed through TSA checkpoints nationwide on March 1.
Landguth said RDU’s latest prediction is that about 5 million people will pass through the airport in 2020, compared to 14.2 million last year. He said travel around Memorial Day and the Fourth of July will indicate how people feel about flying again, in the face of coronavirus and the economic problems it has caused.
Landguth noted that it took years for air travel to recover from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and from the Great Recession of 2008.
“This will be a slow road to recovery,” he said.
