Las Vegas travelers take precautions, carry on despite coronavirus

Though the coronavirus outbreak is leading to some airlines slashing route schedules, passenger traffic Thursday morning was moderate at McCarran International Airport.

Many travelers were taking extra precautions, donning face masks while walking through McCarran’s Terminal 1, including Nicholas Johnson and son Christian, who were catching a connection flight from San Francisco to Phoenix for a baseball tournament. Johnson and his son also took precautionary measures on board their plane from California and planned to do so on their flight to Arizona.

“I made a 2-ounce bottle of alcohol, and I’ve been spraying my hands, spraying our clothes, spraying our (plane) seat down and the foldout table,” Nicholas Johnson said. “We sprayed all the stuff down just to be cautious.”

He said they weren’t the only ones being proactive to ward off the potential threat of catching a virus on his full flight en route to Las Vegas, but he was surprised not everyone was doing so.

“A lot of people with masks and hand sanitizer,” Johnson said. “There were not as many as I would think with everything going on. But there were a handful of people.”

McCarran also ramped up sanitation efforts amid the virus outbreak, increasing the frequency of applying hospital grade disinfectant on all high-touch areas of the airport and expanding the areas of the airport that are covered.

Some travelers, like the Johnsons, were traveling for a specific event. Others were coming from the ConExpo-Con/Ag convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center still wearing their badges from the trade show, where up to 90,000 were expected. Still others were coming to Las Vegas just to have a good time.

Bo Wooley was part of a group of three men from Atlanta who just arrived in Las Vegas to celebrate Wooley’s bachelor party.

Wooley said passenger volume was a bit less than he expected at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and McCarran, recalling previous visits, but said it wasn’t bad considering the circumstances.

“People are canceling trips left and right, so that’s to be expected,” Wooley said.

Having planned the trip several months ago, the group wasn’t going to let the coronavirus deter their party plans.

“My group of friends, what we believe is we don’t think everybody needs to be freaking out about it. We’re still going to have our fun, we’re still going to come out here and do this,” Wooley said. “I know there’s cases (of coronavirus) in Vegas right now, but still, I think everybody needs to take a breath and do what you would normally do, but obviously take precautions.”

Wooley said he heard about the buffet closures at multiple Las Vegas resort properties, but the group didn’t plan on visiting one of those in while in town.

“Something like that (closing buffets) is a good move,” Wooley said. “Serving food to mass people can get kind of scary. But we’re going to get some good food while we’re here.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.