On October 18th, over one million passengers took to the sky in the US since 16th March this year.
On Sunday, 1,031,505 passengers passed through TSA screening checkpoints across the United States. This was the first day since March 16th when US travelers exceeded one million.
The following days leading up to the breakthrough looked like this:
- Monday, October 12th: 958,440
- Tuesday, October 13th: 680,894
- Wednesday, October 14th: 717,940
- Thursday, October 15th: 950,024
- Friday, October 16th: 973,046
- Saturday, October 17th: 788,743
- Sunday, October 18th: 1,031,505
Leisure Travellers
The days of higher passenger numbers indicate that leisure travellers are on the rise, which makes up most of the numbers passing through the gates.
The recovery stands at between 30 and 40% of 2019’s levels.
Some are doing better than others. Low-cost carriers predominantly geared towards leisure travellers have seen an outsized share of passengers board their flights.
Business Travellers
Each airline has a different take on the situation. All major US airlines believe that business travel will come back, but differ of when.
Delta Airlines believe that it will take years for business travellers to come back, while United Airlines believe it will be sooner.
Airlines need both groups to come back strong to enable them to survive.
Presently US airlines are only seeing about 35-40% of the passenger numbers they saw last year, but on the positive side, the overall trend shows relatively stable passenger numbers from one week to the next.
Over the last few weeks the industry has not seen a significant decline in passenger numbers.
When Thanksgiving hits in late November, which is typically a big travel week in the United States, there is a good chance that more than one day a week could see over a million passengers in a day.
Passengers are coming back to fly, and this is good news for airlines, but no one is out of the woods yet, as a second stage of lockdowns could kill the present slow recovery of the airlines.
What happens in the US is seen as a lead to other countries in their airlines health.
