Orlando airport coronavirus rebound is slow
With Walt Disney World poised to reopen this month, the overall rebound from the coronavirus pandemic at Orlando International Airport has been a millimeter at a time but significant, officials said.
The airport in April dropped to as few as 1,500 outbound passengers daily. In the past week, the outbound count has topped 20,000 daily.
The increase has brought the airport back from resembling an empty cavern to showing signs of life: many more TSA officers on duty, more cars in garages and more planes at gates.
Many passengers at the airport say their worries about infection are mild at most.
Orfa Gutierrez, 22, waited during a recent afternoon for her first flight in her life, admitting she was excited and nervous, with only about “10 percent” of that from the coronavirus.
Jay Piccione was returning to Texas after a Universal Studios trip with his 18-year-old son. “It was flawless,” he said of passenger spacing in planes and the consistent requirement to wear a mask during travel to Orlando.
Chad Richard of Brevard County was heading to a gate with his wife and sons, 6 and 8 years old. “I’m of a younger demographic and not as hesitant,” he said of his concerns about the disease.
Still, the airport has recovered to only about 30 percent of its previous volume, meaning that large numbers of would-be passengers have not regained confidence to sit for hours near strangers.
Some have even lost confidence as time has passed. Sandra McCall, a University of Central Florida events coordinator, has flown several times since May because of a funeral and family events. In May, she said, social distancing at airports and in airplanes was generally appropriate.
But that changed in June, especially on a flight from Cleveland to Orlando. There was little distancing among passengers, many of whom appeared to be on vacation and already in a party mood, she said.
When she shared her discouragement with another passenger about the lack of social distancing, he responded, “I think we have pulled that Band-Aid off already,” McCall said.
Last year, the airport ranked as the nation’s 10th-busiest and had started this year with a rate of more than 50 million passengers annually.
Before the collapse in air travel, Orlando’s airport had handled an average of nearly 70,000 outbound passengers daily, according to TSA security counts.
Among signs of returning to normal, though an unwelcome one, TSA officers and police last week intercepted and arrested a passenger carrying a loaded pistol in his bag. The traveler was a minor with a felony record of armed robbery.
But not getting back to normal were the waits at TSA security checkpoints.
On Wednesday and Thursday, passengers stood for 10 minutes or less at the airport’s east and west checkpoints.
TSA’s administrator David Pekoske said Tuesday in a national briefing on his agency’s activities that officers will keep open enough lanes at airports to limit passenger waits to 9 minutes or less on average.
“Keeping those wait times down allows passengers to maintain social distancing,” Pekoske said.
Also, a new normal has appeared at the airport: vending machines stocked with a variety of disposable masks and gloves.
Airport director Phil Brown said airlines are adding back to their Orlando flights and there are signs of rising enthusiasm for Disney’s reopening. But those are tempered by flare-ups of COVID-19 infections in other parts of the country as well as across Florida, which on Thursday reported a record of 10,109 new coronavirus cases.
“There is potential for that to dampen travel into Central Florida,” Brown said.
Looking ahead, airlines are planning for further schedule expansion into August and September, but are also phasing out their practice of limiting the number of passengers on planes to maintain social distancing.
For example, Southwest Airlines, the busiest carrier at Orlando’s airport, will increase departing flights from 2,338 this month to 2,869 in August. Delta will grow from 548 departing flights in July to 1,100 in August.
Brown said that despite face coverings being mandatory at the airport and among major airlines, and the ramping up of rigorous cleaning and disinfection practices, many people won’t get on a plane until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.
“There are a lot of unknowns out there,” Brown said. “I think the best estimate is that we will back to about half of our normal traffic by the end of the fiscal year.”
“We have been inching up but sometimes I call it ‘millimetering up,’” Brown said.