A day with players on a WNBA commercial flight

Breanna Stewart knew where she wanted to go. Someone got in her way. During games, that’s no problem for the WNBA MVP. When boarding a commercial flight, things are a bit trickier.

On a recent connecting flight on the New York Liberty from Atlanta to Las Vegas, Stewart had to ask a man in the aisle seat to stand up so she could wriggle her six-foot body through the line before she sat down in her window seat while the passengers in line behind her waited patiently. The man politely complied, perhaps unaware that one of the top players in the women’s game would be sharing his luggage compartment for the next four hours.

That’s how it works for WNBA players. When they fly, they’re just like everyone else.

The Associated Press toured New York last week and got a first look at the experience. On their cross-country trek, the Liberty won in Connecticut on Tuesday night, appeared to run out of gas in a lopsided blowout in Las Vegas on Thursday, and beat Seattle 81-66 on Sunday after a few days off.

Stepping around people to get to her seat was part of a 1 p.m. Wednesday for Stewart on the second leg of the road trip.

“It was an early day. Drop off your bags, get on the bus to go to the airport and transfer to Atlanta to get to Vegas,” Stewart told the AP during a shuttle to Las Vegas baggage claim. “I’m tired.”

The long day began around 6:30 a.m. when Stewart dragged her luggage into the hotel lobby in Connecticut. All of the Liberty’s 65 checked bags had to be cataloged and loaded onto a bus from Uncasville to Hartford for the team’s 4,345-mile flight to Las Vegas, including a brief layover in Atlanta.

Stewart and her teammates aren’t flying economy, but seats are still tight.

Players sit in comfort seats or economy-plus to ensure extra legroom, according to the collective agreement. That helps, but bigger players like Stewart and her 6-6 teammate Jonquel Jones still find themselves in tight spaces at times. Not to mention 6-10 Han Xu, who was not on a road trip because she played with the Chinese national team in the Asia Cup.

Now they can upgrade to first class at their own expense.

“Those seats are tight. I tried to get an upgrade to first class to have more room, but the flight was full,” said Jones, who had to duck to even get on the plane. “It’s by no means a great way for us to travel that way with a game on Tuesday and then another game on Thursday.”

Stewart, a Diamond Medallion member on Delta, was upgraded to first class for the trip from Hartford to Atlanta due to her status with the airline. She wasn’t so lucky on the second leg of the journey – the more than four-hour flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas.

There are a few perks for players, but even some of them come with a catch.

Once the 33-member New York tour group arrived at Connecticut’s Bradley Airport, it was a seamless process with Liberty Operations staff efficiently unloading the bus in less than 3 minutes. A Delta representative met them with all the baggage tags and tickets.

With tickets in hand, players headed straight to security — but here’s the catch: While most had TSA precheck or Clear status, foreign-born players don’t have that option.

Jones, who is from the Bahamas, and Marine Johannes, who is French, usually have to go through regular security lines. Sometimes they get lucky, as the pair did on Wednesday, when they were escorted through the priority line by a Delta representative.

The team spent about 50 minutes at the Connecticut airport waiting for a flight to Atlanta. Bradley isn’t a very busy airport, and all the players were able to relax — even Stewart, who won four national championships while in college at nearby UConn. Players sat quietly alone, checking cell phones or listening to music while others chatted with teammates.

Their flights were on time despite thunderstorms that wreaked havoc on air travel last week, but if there had been any cancellations, New York had its usual back-up plan.

The buses transporting the Mohegan Sun team remained at the Connecticut airport until the Liberty’s plane took off. Assistant General Manager Ohemaa Nyanin said it is common practice, adding that if something had gone wrong, the Liberty would have taken the bus back to New York, where there were more flight options.

After the two and a half hour flight to Atlanta, there was a short layover before their connecting flight. Players quickly went to get a coffee or some food for the longer part of the journey.

It helped that the team didn’t have to saunter through Atlanta’s busy airport for the connecting flight. It was only one gate away from the gate where they landed.

When the team finally arrived in Las Vegas nearly 12 hours after dropping off their luggage in the Connecticut hotel lobby, the players boarded a waiting bus as staff made their way to baggage claim to make sure all 65 bags made it to Nevada.

“We just let them be and do what they want,” coach Sandy Brondello said of the plans for the players. “Some watch movies, some just sleep.”

The wear and tear on players’ bodies is one reason they’ve lobbied for charter flights, with New York paying a heavy price for ignoring travel restrictions. The Liberty was fined a WNBA record $500,000 last year for using charter flights in 2021 during the second half of that season.

However, the league has relaxed its stance this season, allowing teams that have games scheduled on consecutive nights to use charter flights. The league has said in the past that it would cost about $25 million to charter the entire season, or about $2 million per team.

The WNBA is also allowing Mercury center Brittney Griner to use charter flights following her highly publicized arrest in Russia. She did travel commercially with the team last month and the 6-9 All-Star was harassed by a social media provocateur during an incident in Dallas.

The Liberty, like many WNBA teams, travels with security. During the trip from New York to Las Vegas, only one fan came up and asked for a photo with security guard Sabrina Ionescu.

Players have become more wary as their celebrity status continues to rise.

“I’ve had guys come to me and berate me about how they could beat me one-on-one,” said Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray. “Usually people are nice, but nowadays you can’t be too careful.”

Stewart believes the Liberty organization is doing what they can to make traveling as easy as possible for players, but with players’ health and safety at risk, she thinks more needs to be done.

“I don’t think we’re asking for anything crazy,” Stewart said. “We want to stay at our best, realizing that all the prehab and rehab and lifting and things we do for our bodies is just as important as the way we travel and the ability to stretch our legs.”

She added that players “have to make sure we don’t get bloated from flying because that’s something.”

A consolation for the Liberty: this was their only road trip with a connecting flight.