August 13, 2020
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) is committed to your health and well-being. The pandemic forced massive shifts in our lives. So you can expect things to be different the next time you travel.
FlyHealthy@SEA is our layered, comprehensive action plan to ensure your health and well-being while traveling. It has kicked off required face coverings and physical distancing, boosted cleaning and disinfecting activities, and prompted the use of touchless technologies.
We’re happy to see you as we stretch towards 20,000 daily departing passengers, but we understand everyone has a different comfort level about returning to the airport. We recently asked you for feedback about travel in our new normal.
We want to understand your expectations during the COVID-19 era and the actions that restore your confidence, so we asked you in multiple places to get a broader and deeper set of data. We polled you on our social media and asked you in an online survey via text and email. We also partnered with KPI, an aviation marketing consultancy, to survey customer confidence in air travel amongst King County residents. In all, we received over 900 responses, and the feedback is generally consistent across platforms.
We learned that you’re prepared to change your travel habits and take on new procedures. You also shared that developing a safe new normal in travelling is more important and realistic to return to flying rather than finding a vaccine.
Here is what else we heard:
- Over 64 percent of you are leisure travelers, and we expect to welcome you back first
- More than 75 percent have heard of the enhanced measures at the airport in response to COVID-19
- Most people (75 percent) feel confident about the health and safety measures at SEA
- Many of you feel safe enough to get back into the skies now or soon. And a quarter of you have already traveled since April
- Sanitizer stations and wearing masks are the two most important actions in all airport touchpoints
- Good thing we have over 250 hand sanitizer stations throughout the terminal for your use, and we have reached 93 percent compliance for folks wearing masks at SEA!
- Sanitization is one of your top concerns
- Did you know we spend over 5,700 hours cleaning and disinfecting each week? We use medical-grade cleaning products and added an emphasis on high-touch areas like buttons, handrails, and counters.
- King County residents have higher expectations of airport actions than the national average
- Pretty close to a third of you learned about FlyHealthy @ SEA on social media; another heard about it in the news media; and the final third came directly to our website
Thank you to everyone that took our travel surveys. Your feedback is important to us and is a factor in how we implement health and safety measures in the next phase of FlyHealthy @ SEA. Our team is ready for you now, and we continue to evolve with new, best-in-class ways to keep you healthy at the airport.
First image credit: Khalie Whitman, @xo.khaliewhitman
