Social distancing not a problem at RDU as coronavirus leaves terminal nearly empty

Few places show how coronavirus has upended life in the Triangle as much as the main ticketing hall in Raleigh-Durham International Airport’s Terminal 2 in the hours before dawn.

This is usually RDU’s busiest time. With a quarter of the day’s flights scheduled to depart before 8 a.m., the lines for security routinely spill out of the checkpoint area at this hour last year and snake around the check-in counters, which are also crowded.

At the same hour Monday, there were no lines. No lines to buy a ticket or check a bag. No lines at Starbucks. No trouble finding a place to park in the deck between the terminals. And no waiting to show your ticket and ID to the Transportation Security Administration agent at the checkpoint.

“It’s like the officer is waiting for you,” said Diego Salgado. “This is shocking.”

Salgado, a junior mechanical engineering student at Duke University, was flying to Phoenix on his way home to Mexico, now that Duke has closed its campus because of the coronavirus. He’s been through RDU before and knows what it’s like normally. He flew up on Sunday from the airport in Miami, where he expected some end-of-spring-break crowds.

“Not to this extent, but it was pretty empty,” he said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, something’s wrong.’”

The federal government has not restricted travel within the United States, the way it has limited entry from Asian and European countries where COVID-19 is prevalent. But with many companies cutting back on business travel and families canceling vacations, airlines have suddenly found themselves with half-full planes.

Delta, American and United have all said they will pare their domestic capacity by up to 20%, and RDU’s two trans-Atlantic flights, to London and Paris, have been suspended. But as of Monday, there were still about 200 departures on the schedule at RDU.

At 6 a.m., when people are usually stressing about making their flight, the ticketing hall was strangely quiet. Airline, TSA and airport employees often outnumbered travelers, and workers with wheelchairs sat in small groups or wandered around, looking in vain for someone who might need one.

“I’ve seen more people in here during a hurricane,” one TSA agent said to another.

The number of travelers passing through RDU in February was up 9.4% from the same month a year earlier, according to airport president Michael Landguth. But in the first week of March, Landguth said, the TSA says the number of people going through security checkpoints to board planes at RDU declined 8.3%.

On Thursday, Landguth said the airport expected traffic would be down 10% in March, but said it has made financial forecasts based on declines of 20% and 30% as well. He urged travelers to check airline websites for the latest changes to flights.

“This is happening so quickly right now, airlines are not making phone calls to the airports letting us know when adjustments to their schedules are occurring,” he said. “So stay close to your carrier. Make sure you know what’s going on directly from them.”

Those who flew Monday knew they were doing something many people have chosen not to. Some wore masks and carried wipes or hand sanitizer in their bags.

Shelley Schmidt of Durham, an animal relocation contractor for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or ASPCA, travels three weeks each month and was in Houston a week ago where the airport was “still fairly busy.”

“This is incredibly quiet,” Schmidt said, looking around the terminal.

She was due in Chattanooga and thought about not going because of the virus.

“I considered it,” Schmidt said. “But I feel like the work that I do is important enough to take a chance.”

Bo Humphrey of Summit, New Jersey, had previously bought a ticket to see her daughter play lacrosse at Duke this weekend. Rather than cancel when the lacrosse season was ended and the university shut down, Humphrey flew down anyway to check on her child.

“I’ve got my wipes and try to be sensible,” Humphrey said. “I’m not much of an alarmist.”

With an extra week of spring break, her daughter and some friends found cheap tickets to Florida on Southwest Airlines. So after seeing them off in Terminal 1, Humphrey and her wipes came over to Terminal 2 for the flight home to New Jersey.

“We’re going to live to see tomorrow,” she said.

This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 1:09 PM.