Taking the long way due to coronavirus

It's Sunday, March 22, 2020, and I'm fat, dumb, and happy in my seat 33,000 feet in the air. I'm staring aimlessly out the front window, enjoying a nice view of Norfolk and Virginia Beach off to my left as I leave a contrail over the East Coast, doing seven miles a minute from Washington-Dulles to Jacksonville, Florida.

Suddenly, I'm fat, dumb, and less happy as I hear ATC tell an aircraft that was going the other direction, to LaGuardia, to contact their dispatcher and file an alternate outside of New York Center's airspace. So many controllers had called out sick today that they were going to have to shut down a large section of New York airspace. I heard a phrase I'd never actually heard spoken on the radio before: New York Center was going "ATC zero".

This was a bit of a concern for me, as after we got to Jacksonville, we were going to be flying to Newark (also in NY airspace) half an hour later. One of the few good things about the collapse in air travel this month (on this last four-day trip, I flew less than 100 passengers combined in all four days!) is that fuel is no issue. With almost nobody on board, we can fill the tanks as much as we want and never have to worry about being too heavy.

So that's just what we did: we took about 30% more fuel than we needed in case we had to hold for a long time or had to go somewhere else. We got lucky: with the exception of a few S-turns to create additional spacing en route, we were able to make it to Newark as scheduled. The reduction in airplanes in the sky in general probably helped—after all, shutting down a lane on the freeway doesn't matter as much if no one is driving anyway.

After we got to Newark, all we had left was a quick flight up to Albany, NY for the night. Although due to the reduced staffing they were spacing takeoffs 8 minutes apart instead of the normal minute or less, on the way out there was only one aircraft ahead of us in line so we still made it out early.

However, the next morning, we were going from Albany to Dulles, and we did get impacted directly by the coronavirus-induced ATC staffing issues. A large section of the airspace was shut down: a chunk that we normally fly right through. However, instead of the direct route, we ended up going far to the west, all the way to central Pennsylvania, in order to avoid that closed sector before we turned toward the airport.

Taking the long way around NY's airspace.

This is what that same flight looked like a week before, when things were still relatively normal:

Just a week earlier, in more normal times.

Fortunately, again, since we were able to load up on gas because we had exactly 4 (yes, four!) passengers on board the entire aircraft, we ended up getting off the gate 10 minutes early and getting to Dulles on time.

I hope you and yours stay safe and stay in!



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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

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