The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the airline industry (and tourism in general of course) and that was readily apparent last evening when we flew out of San Francisco. The International Terminal was eerily quiet except for a few travelers and a policeman on a bike practicing his skills by riding through empty ticketing booth lines and "stay 6 feet apart" circles marked on the floor of the terminal. We arrived extra early for our flight, got some sushi and ramen at one of the few restaurants that was open and we waited for more passengers to show up. This just didn't happen.
We boarded the flight and there were a total of 36 people on a plane that usually carries about 300 passengers. The 4 of us were all seated together during takeoff but there were only about 10 people in our part of the plane and they did allow us to move to empty rows to lay down, as long as we were social distancing and wearing our masks.
Being the chatty one that I am, I asked one of the flight attendants about how he felt about the flight being so empty. He said, "it's very strange and it is not sustainable. Not sure we will be able to keep doing this much longer". He reported that this was fairly typical of flights over the last few weeks with an average of about 50 passengers. Sadly there have already been layoffs at Air New Zealand because of the pandemic with more likely to come.
We all slept during the 12.5 hour flight and I slept more than I have ever slept on a long-haul flight. Mike and I were "reminiscing" about the last time we did this move with a 19 month old who screamed for 2.5 hours on the plane and a relatively calm and easy 4.5 year old. Traveling with a tween and a teen is damn easy. They both were stellar yesterday.
More after we settle into quarantine somewhere in NZ.
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