What travel advisory? At Atlantic City International Airport, nonchalance, Florida tans, and a 92-year-old grandmother.
"I had the whole airplane to myself," said retired mason Joseph Thompson, 68, who flew in from Fort Lauderdale to Atlantic City on Sunday. "I felt like I was Donald Trump."
POMONA, N.J. — Nobody seemed overly concerned about flying on Sunday, the day after a federal advisory was issued strongly urging people in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut not to travel. At least, that seemed to be the case for the people arriving and departing from Atlantic City International Airport.
“Not at all,” said Alexia Glass, flying out of ACY to get home to Atlanta, where she works as a model. “I have to go to Florida first.”
“No,” said a restaurant owner who said he was on his way to his other house in Florida, when asked whether he was concerned. (He did not give his name as he entered the terminal’s revolving doors, where one Spirit Airlines person worked the check-in desk.)
“There’s no travel ban," he said. "I’m hoping this thing blows over where everybody realizes it’s the flu. It is the flu. Eventually the hospitals won’t be overflowing. I’m not nervous at all about it.”
Eduardo Rodriguez and Marianella Martinez, traveling home to Miami with their son, to whom they’d given a mask, were equally nonchalant. They said they were not planning to strictly self-quarantine upon arrival, as the governor of Florida has mandated for travelers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in yet another directive aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, but would keep things low-key.
“No,” Rodriguez said when asked about the quarantine. “No," was also his reply when asked whether he was worried about flying.
“The quarantining in Miami is normal,” Martinez said, before blowing a kiss to the person who’d dropped her off at the airport. “Keep in your house.”
The advisory was issued in a late-night tweet by President Donald Trump, who earlier Saturday had threatened a stricter quarantining of the three states. It urged against nonessential travel. On Sunday, people made their own calculus of what that meant. Both Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the advisory just echoed their own guidelines for their states.
Arriving from Fort Lauderdale, Joseph Thompson, 68, of Vineland, a retired mason, said he felt like, well, the president as he stretched out in the first row of a Spirit Airlines flight that had four passengers on it.
“I feel like a king. I had the whole airplane to myself," Thompson said. "I felt like I was Donald Trump.”
He paid $38 round trip.
“Do you want to see the ticket?” he asked.
He’d gone down there to visit his former boss at Philadelphia’s Broad Street Diner, John Patitucci, who’d been in the hospital for an operation on his toes, said Thompson, who wasn’t allowed in because of coronavirus-inspired precautions. He said he could understand a travel restriction involving New York, which has the most coronavirus cases in the U.S., but not New Jersey.
“Everything’s going to be good," Thompson said, echoing the optimism of his fellow travelers Sunday. "Everything’s going to get ready to be opened up. You know what I miss the most? I miss the casinos.”
In the meantime, he’s not going to let a global pandemic tie him down.
“I’m going to travel back [to Florida] in a couple weeks,” Thompson said.
Tina Giacomo of Florida said she flew up from Fort Myers, on a plane with about 16 people, to take care of some business in Atlantic County. “It wasn’t bad,” she said. “I mean, I’m not doing it a lot. I washed my hands, took a shower before I went to the airport.”
Showing more worry than others at the airport was Ed Bober, who hurried inside to meet his 92-year-old grandmother, Betty Scottino, who was flying in from Fort Myers.
The family, he said, had made its own calculation: Scottino was better off at home in Hammonton, closer to doctors, than in Fort Myers, where she had been staying with another relative for the winter.
Wearing a light white sweater, Scottino emerged from the terminal first in a wheelchair, balancing a small blue duffel, then walked to a waiting car unassisted. She said she felt fine and that she had not been worried about flying.
“It was very good,” she said. “I’m glad to be home.”
Bober said the family was not planning on sending her back to Florida anytime soon.
“We’re gonna keep her here,” he said.