Whether or not you’re been on a plane recently or plan to be, you’ve probably heard the stories about closed airport restaurants and services, scarcities of rideshare drivers and midair brawls over flaunting mask requirements. But despite those obstacles, we’re flying anyway, visiting with family members we haven’t seen since before lockdown or taking vacations long overdue. So we asked Chris Jones, chief marketing officer with the Clark County Department of Aviation, how such problems can be met head-on—or, better yet, avoided entirely. Here are a few tips to make your upcoming air travel easier, whether you’re flying out of McCarran or coming home from someplace else.
BRING YOUR MASK
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has gone back and forth on indoor mask-wearing over the course of this wildly optimistic vaccine rollout summer, but the Federal Aviation Administration’s message has been consistent. “Airports have always been under a federal [mask] requirement, which right now runs through September 13,” Jones says. “You have to have a mask on when you’re indoors at the airport. Whether you’re on a plane, on a shuttle bus or if you’re inside the terminal at all, you’re required to wear a mask.”
It’s entirely possible the FAA’s mask mandate, which has already been extended once, might be lengthened again in response to the recent surge of Delta variant cases. Long story short: You might need to hold on to those masks until your Thanksgiving trip home, and possibly even longer than that, unless vaccination numbers go up and COVID-19 cases wane.
EXPECT REDUCED SERVICES
McCarran didn’t lay off employees during last year’s shutdown, though a voluntary separation program was offered. “We had about 100 people, out of roughly 1,400 pre-pandemic, that took advantage of that,” Jones says. “There’s also been some natural attrition, people taking jobs out of state, retirement or whatever else, so we were down people, and we were not able to begin hiring until our new fiscal year began on the first of July. So, we actually have some positions open right now that we’re accepting applications for.”
That staffing reduction means some airport services aren’t operating at their pre-pandemic levels, translating into slowdowns. (The Transportation Security Administration, a separate entity from the Department of Aviation, is also faced with reduced staffing.) Individual airlines are short on skycaps. And many airport vendors don’t have the employees they need to operate; some of them haven’t even reopened yet.
McCarran has held job expos and is refilling its vacancies, but that will take time. Until the airport, its vendors, the airlines and the TSA are back at full staffing strength, Jones suggests simple patience.
“The public is coming in with the idea that [traveling] will be exactly what they remember,” Jones says. “It’s not.”
ALLOW MORE TIME
Getting to the airport early is always a good idea, but even more so with air travel in such a state of flux. McCarran recently reopened half of its E gates, and it’s steadily ramping up capacity as traffic climbs. (June saw 3.8 million passengers at the airport, roughly twice the volume from January.) But with airlines reducing fares to lure back customers, they’re pulling in a lot of people who don’t usually fly—and that means the airport’s reduced resources will be stretched to their limits. And it could only get worse as convention traffic returns, and out-of-state Raider Nation denizens begin flying in for home games.
“In 2019, I could show up 45 minutes before a flight and figure I’d be fine, and for the large part I was; I didn’t miss the flight. I wouldn’t do that now, because I don’t know who’s going to be in line with me and what the delays might be,” Jones says. “And planes are getting really full right now; if you do miss your flight, there’s not a lot of available seats for them to really accommodate you.”
His advice is simple: Get to the airport earlier, at least two hours before your flight. That should give you enough time to check bags—remember, skycaps and baggage handlers aren’t at full staffing yet—and to get through the TSA checkpoint. You might need the time; you might not. But is waiting until the last minute worth the trouble of missing a flight?
“Last month, I flew out with my kids on a Tuesday night at 10 o’clock. We got through the checkpoint very, very easily, and they were all angry with me: ‘Why did we come so early? We’re just sitting around here,’” Jones says. “And I was like, ‘Because I just don’t know. I mean, even working here, I didn’t know what the line would be like, and I didn’t want to get here and get caught.’”
PLAN AHEAD FOR GROUND TRANSPORTATION AND PARKING
Getting into and out of the airport is much more challenging post-pandemic, whether you’re driving you own car or relying on taxicabs and rideshare. “Uber and Lyft drivers haven’t come back in volume,” Jones says, adding that taxi companies have said they’re having a hard time finding drivers, and that the shuttle buses to the offsite rental car center are also short-staffed.
That means that a lot more travelers have been driving themselves to McCarran, which creates another problem. “Parking has been filling quite regularly,” Jones says. He recommends calling McCarran’s parking hotline (702-261-5122) before heading to the airport. “When you call it, a person will answer, 24 hours a day; it’s not recorded. … You can have a better idea before you come here where to proceed with your car, as opposed to driving here and finding out at the eleventh hour that you have to go somewhere else to park.”
WATCH THE WEATHER
It’s rare, but extreme heat can force cancellations. “The air traffic control tower has different configurations, and by that, I mean which way the aircraft are taking off and landing,” Jones says. “When it’s really hot, the best configuration that we have has less of a flow than some of the other ones that we can use when it’s not quite so hot. If they have to go into that high heat configuration, which lessens the number of planes that can take off and land in an hour, then you do see flights affected—cancellations, diverted flights and things along those lines.”
