The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Thanksgiving travel drop-off expected in state
WINDSOR LOCKS — Public officials across the country are discouraging unnecessary travel during Thanksgiving week, but officials at Connecticut’s largest airport say the upstate hub will be ready for those who will still fly.
At Bradley International Airport, officials have accepted that the precipitous decline in air travel during the coronavirus crisis will not be reversed in the final weeks of 2020. But they and other aviation-industry leaders still expect significant traffic between Thanksgiving week and the new year, and believe an array of health and safety measures can help protect passengers during the second wave of the pandemic.
“It’s going to be a holiday unlike any other we’ve experienced,” Ryan Tenny, chief information officer for the Connecticut Airport Authority, which owns and operates Bradley, said in an interview. “All of our measures are about creating a safe travel experience. We certainly realize there are different levels of comfort for everyone when it comes to travel.”
Far fewer travelers
Anumber of travel groups are anticipating a major decrease in Thanksgiving week travel.
AAA is predicting the largest one-year decline since the Great Recession more than a decade ago. Based on mid-October forecast models, the organization would have expected up to 50 million Americans to travel for Thanksgiving, down from 55 million in 2019. But AAA officials now expect the actual number to be even lower.
Thanksgiving air travel volume will plummet 48 percent from last year — to 2.4 million travelers, AAA predicted. This would mark the largest one-year decrease on record.
At Bradley, CAA officials are projecting a 38 percent jump in passenger traffic in Thanksgiving week compared with the past few weeks.
“When you talk about a 38 percent increase, I think when people hear that, it sounds like a lot, but it still represents a 65 percent decline year over year,” Tenny said. “They’re very humbling numbers for the times that we’re in.”
The drop-off correlates with public officials’ warnings to avoid unnecessary travel during the holiday season.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website advises potential travelers that “postponing travel and staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others this year.”
Gov. Ned Lamont and other elected officials have amplified that message.
Connecticut’s infection rate ran at nearly 6 percent in the past week, compared with about 1 percent in the first week of October. Approximately 850 are hospitalized across the state with coronavirus-related illnesses, compared with about 40 such hospitalizations at one point in August.
“If people proceed with celebrations in small gatherings outside of their immediate families, they risk generating a dramatic spike in cases after Thanksgiving,” read a statement issued this week by Lamont and the governors of Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New
York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. “All governors are urging their residents to stay home and celebrate small this year in an effort to help eliminate the risk of unchecked COVID-19 spread in the coming weeks.”
For more than eight months, airports and airlines have been grappling with steep decreases in demand. A total of about 1.9 million travelers passed through Bradley in the first nine months of 2020, down 62 percent from the same period in 2019.
At Tweed-New Haven Airport, Connecticut’s only other airport offering commercial service and a regional hub for American Airlines, American’s service has been suspended until further notice.
U.S. airlines carried about 25 million domestic and international passengers in September, down 65 percent from the same period last year — but better than a record low of 3 million in April, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
“The situation remains dire for U.S. airlines,” Nicholas Calio, president and CEO of Airlines for America, the trade association for the country’s major passenger and cargo airlines, said Thursday during a virtual roundtable discussion of industry leaders. “We are in the midst of what we hope is a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, and it has hit very, very hard.”
Flying during a pandemic
During the past few months, a number of airports have launched coronavirus testing to help travelers comply with new regulations during the pandemic.
Anyone coming to Con
necticut from a state on Connecticut’s travel advisory list can shorten a mandatory 14-day quarantine if they can show written proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken in the 72 hours before their trip or anytime after arriving.
With the exception of New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Hawaii, every state is on Connecticut’s latest list, which is updated every Tuesday.
At the end of September, Bradley opened a testing center in its baggage-claim area. A daily average of about 300 passengers are getting tested, according to airport officials.
In addition, the CAA and Hartford HealthCare have announced a drive-through COVID-19 testing site on Bradley property that is set to open Monday. It will be available to the general public without appointments, and it
will provide another option for passengers.
Aviation officials also cite the importance of physical distancing when possible, heightened hygiene and cleaning standards and mandates for passengers to wear masks while in terminals and on planes.
“If we have a passenger that goes through our screening process without wearing amask, we ask that passenger to put one on if they have it,” David Pekoske, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s administrator, said during the Thursday roundtable. “If they don’t have it, we provide the passenger a mask. Our experience has been the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of passengers do comply with the request to wear a mask if they’re not (already).”
The CAA’s Tenny advised passengers to visit the Brad
ley website to learn more about the airport’s health and safety measures.
While airlines are implementing significant measures to reduce the potential for COVID-19 transmission during flights, those actions do not eliminate the risks, according to David Banach, an infectious-disease physician and hospital epidemiologist in the UConn Health system.
“At this point, with increasing widespread transmission of (COVID-19) in Connecticut and nationally, coupled with the increased numbers of individuals traveling around the holiday season, the likelihood of close proximity with an individual with COVID-19 associated with air travel increases as well,” Banach said.