Biden travels commercially from DCA and ends up stuck with delays like everyone else

WASHINGTON (AP) — A crowd of people gathered at a passenger gate at Reagan National Airport on Friday as fog-filled Washington skies caused an hour-long ground stop to support passengers hoping to exit American Airlines’ Terminal D.

But the densely populated area soon swelled even more, as word spread through the nearby gates that, of the hundreds of arriving and departing air travelers, only one was accompanied by a member of the US Secret Service, along with uniformed local police officers: former President Joe Biden.

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Biden, who has rarely appeared in public since leaving office last year, sat like many of his fellow passengers, waiting for the flight that would take him to Columbia, South Carolina, for an evening event with the South Carolina Democratic Party.

The passengers whispered and gasped in astonishment: Why would a man who was for a time the leader of the free world be, like them, at the mercy of travel delays at the airport, even as he sat hidden in his security detail?

It may have made more sense for Biden than for some other former presidents. Biden, known for years as Amtrak Joe, prided himself as a senator on becoming the country’s biggest Amtrak fan, regularly taking the train home to Delaware instead of staying in Washington. Now, as a former president, he has been seen riding the rails ever since, taking selfies and chatting with fellow passengers.

On Friday, the atmosphere was much the same, when Biden — seated in the third row of a small first-class cabin on a jetliner — boarded the plane ahead of other passengers, along with his detail, whose personnel were spread throughout the plane.

“God bless you, sir,” one woman said, walking past Biden in his window seat, the newspaper in his lap.

“Thank you for your service,” one man said as he shook Biden’s hand.

The woman sitting in the aisle next to the former president first placed her coffee on the armrest they shared, placed a bag in the overhead compartment, then sat down and realized that her seatmate was the country’s 46th president.

Biden placed his hand on her cup to steady it, then met her greeting gaze as she took her seat.

“I feel like I’m about to cry,” the woman said, and they shook hands and talked for the next hour throughout the flight.

Former presidents and their spouses have lifetime Secret Service protection under federal law, but there are no provisions guaranteeing the elite levels of private travel that were a necessary feature of their time in office.