Let me preface this by saying I fly for work.. a lot. Before Wuhan flu I made diamond status with Delta. I often get upgraded to first class automatically when I fly.
Recently, because of specific state restrictions, I've been working from the office with customers over video instead of taking a hands on approach but sometimes you have to go.
Today, I flew back from DFW to ATL. I saw roughly 500 soldiers in fatigues, spread out through check in at DFW. Didn't think anything of it.. I've seen military flying commercial before, usually natl guard. I haven't seen quite that many before but still, didnt think anything of it.. until I landed in ATL.
Every other body in that airport was sporting fatigues. I've never seen anything like it. Something big is going on. I'd estimate 2,000 soldiers in that airport at the time.. but there's no way for me to know for sure.
I've been flying almost every week for the past 6 years, never seen anything like this.
Yeah ... you gotta remember this is the end of the holiday season and thousands of service members (mostly young single troops) are traveling back to their duty locations after being home for the holidays. Happens every year. In past years you couldn’t fly in uniform if flying commercial. Now I think it is required to fly in uniform. I retired last year, and in my last 4 years I flew quite a bit. Sometimes we would actually fly at the end of a duty day (conference and stuff) and have to literally change in the bathroom from utilities into civies. Talk about a pain in the ass. I was a mid-senior grade officer. No shit true story ... about 4 years ago I was flying with a 3 Star Gen. We stopped to change in an airport restroom. You cant make that shit up. He was totally cool about it too. He was like “fuk fellas, it is what it is”.
Soldiers take their guns on holiday? cool
Some do.
Thanks.