Travelers who haven’t flown since the Covid-19 pandemic begins are in for a surprise if they’re expecting empty airports and planes when they return.
Passengers packed planes through the Thanksgiving and year-end holiday rushes despite advice from the CDC to avoid travel and is now doing so in greater numbers for spring break.
The latest evidence arrived Saturday from the Transportation Security Administration. The agency stated it screened 1,357,111 passengers on Friday, on top of 1,284,271 on Thursday as travelers headed out on vacations. With more than half the month to go, March is shaping up to be a strong one for airlines, with passenger counts topping 1 million on seven days so far.
Friday’s numbers are the highest since the Sunday after New Yr’s when 1,327,289 passengers were screened. The totals fell under 90,000 in April 2020 within the early days of the pandemic and didn’t top 1 million again till October.
Passenger counts are still down sharply from pre-pandemic levels. Friday’s figures were down 38% from the same day in 2019 when more than 2.1 million individuals passed by the TSA checkpoints. On the same day in 2020, passenger counts totaled 1.7 million as travel hadn’t come to a halt yet.
Traveler optimism is rising as more Americans are vaccinated and case counts decline.
