Clipped wings: Virus turns tennis pros' flights into ordeals

PARIS (AP) — For the part of their job that some tennis players have always disliked — flying — Jack Sock says he toyed with what would have been a novel solution to the problem of how to stay coronavirus-free on planes: Wear a head-to-toe beekeeper's suit.

The American was joking, of course. But the headache of how to globe-trot and stay healthy in the era of COVID-19 is no laughing matter for tennis pros who, unlike other business travelers, must keep flying for their paychecks to keep rolling in. Globally, air travel is down more than 85% from a year ago, according to industry figures. But tennis players cannot home-work. There are no matches on Zoom.

And so, as now-rare world travelers, they've also become unwitting first-hand witnesses of how the pandemic is battering the airline industry. With tournaments back on again, they're finding themselves rattling around eerily quiet airports that once hummed, and worrying about how well filtered the air is aboard planes. Those not wealthy enough to fly private jets describe the flying experience as having been transformed into a masked ordeal of gels, social distancing and stress.

“Shocking” and “weird” is how Sock, competing in Paris at the French Open, described his recent stopover at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The huge hub averaged more than 5 million passengers per month in 2019. But it saw just 636,883 passengers this July, an 89% plunge compared to the same month last year, according to the Port Authority's most recent figures.

"There wasn’t one place open inside. There were maybe 20 people in the airport," Sock said, speaking after winning his first-round match. “That was a weird sight — one of the biggest cities in the world.”

Flying and the unavoidable proximity with other passengers compounds the angst of players...