Four Georgians who were stranded on the Coral Princess cruise ship off the coast of Florida are self-quarantining at home now after Sen. Kelly Loeffler sent her private jet to return them to Atlanta.
The two couples, Alan and Sharon Podrid from Marietta and David and Dianne Fowler from Sharpsburg, were met on the tarmac by Loeffler and a pair of ambulances that took them straight home.
The Coral Princess is one of many cruise ships that have been in limbo due to the coronavirus, and at least 1,000 passengers were on board when it finally docked in Miami about a month after its original departure. Two people died on the ship and a third died after eventually being transported to a hospital. At least 12 passengers tested positive for the virus.
David Fowler and his wife were headed on a cruise for his 73rd birthday, headed to South America. The ship left on March 5, and along the way the couple became aware of the disease's spread, and of some countries enacting restrictions to prevent more infections.
Eventually, after several days of waiting and after several passengers became ill, the ship arrived near Miami. But once the ship arrived in port, the Fowlers and other cruise ship passengers could not leave.
New guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prohibit those who were on cruise ships from flying commercial flights, even if they are asymptomatic.
"The rules on who can disembark, how they can, what cirucmstances about their onward travel [etc.] changed about four times," Fowler said. "I just decided that I needed to make some noise."
He did an interview with Miami's News 10: "The information is very sketchy for us right now,” he said last week. “I don’t want to stay in Florida. I want to go home to Atlanta, and that shouldn’t be that difficult to do.”
The Podrids did an interview with USA Today: "Get us off this ship, so we can get home and let them deal with these sick people," Alan Podrid said over the phone to the outlet Monday.
The cruise line had also been arranging chartered transportation for all of the passengers to get people off the ship and back home, and some of that noise managed to make its way back to Georgia, to Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia's newest U.S. senator.
“As soon as I heard from the governor that there were Georgians on the cruise ships in Florida trying to get home, I didn’t think twice about doing my part to help them," Loeffler said in a statement. "I’m so glad they are back and in good spirits.”
Malcolm Douglas is a senior pilot with Enterprises Aviation, and said he got the call about three hours before takeoff.
"Our chief pilot called up and said 'Hey, we may have a trip to go down and pick up some people that have been stuck on a cruise ship, do you want to go?' and I said of course," he said. "Over the years of my career, we've done some rescue flights and some humanitarian flights and so forth."
Douglas said the flight crew felt priviliged to help out Georgians in need, and that once his self-quarantine ends in two weeks he would be happy to do a similar flight again.
"This was definitely at the top of meaningful flights that I've done, politics aside we did a good thing yesterday and I hope we do it again," he said. "We couldn't see smiles behind the mask, but I can tell you they were all smiles when they saw us."
Fowler said Monday afternoon were called to disembark the ship and driven to the airport.
"We pulled up next to this airplane, and here's this Bombardier Challenger 300, a very upscale corporate jet," the retired Army officer said. "The crew comes out and greets us, they informed us who they are and whose airplane it was and we were touching down in Atlanta an hour and a half later."
Loeffler's considerable financial assets, including the Bombardier Challenger 300 jet, have dominated coverage of her brief Senate career. Several opponents decried the use of her jet after an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story highlighted the purchase and travel Loeffler conducted with it. “Between her new private jet and hunting ad debacle, Kelly Loeffler is doing everything she can to show just how out-of-touch she is with Georgia voters,” a Democratic Party of Georgia spokesman said at the time. “Loeffler can’t possibly understand the concerns of everyday Georgians when all she seems concerned with is hiding her private air travel.” Rep. Doug Collins (R-Gainesville), her primary GOP rival in the election this fall that will see all candidates regardless of party face off on the same ballot, even launched a parody Twitter account aimed to track every time she used the plane.
Fowler said he met Loeffler and her husband when he got off the plane, and dismissed the notion that it was a political ploy to distract from numerous controversies around the plane, her wealth and recent questions about stock trades and allegations of profiteering off of a pandemic. "She was just doing a good deed, in my opinion, and we greatly appreciate it," he said. "People can say what they want, I lived it."
The financial services executive and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, have a net worth of about half a billion dollars, making her the wealthiest member of Congress.
Last month, Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta was used to temporarily house and monitor several hundred cruise ship passengers from the Grand Princess after it docked in California.
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