Looking at the Latest Air Travel Stats

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In my past life, I worked with numbers day in and day out. While I don’t work in that industry anymore, I’m still drawn to numbers, stats and graphs.

So, I was very interested to read about the latest air travel stats from this past Labor Day Weekend. Here are some highlights:

–This past Friday, the TSA posted the highest number of passengers screened since March: 968,673 passengers

–Holiday weekend travel was down -60% over last year, which is better than the low this past April at -95%

–Peak summer travel from Memorial Day through Labor Day was down -76%

Is It All Bad News?

On the surface, yes, the numbers are still bad. -60% passengers over a holiday weekend is a huge loss to LY. But, the numbers are trending up. If you look at the graph in the article linked above, you can see that the 2020 air passenger numbers are slowly rising. Very slowly.

Unfortunately for airlines, many businesses are forgoing business travel in favor of virtual meetings. For example, the company my husband works for has not had any business travel since March. The company’s big fall conference was already moved online. My husband normally flies on at least two business trips a month, but doesn’t foresee any business trips until at least next spring or summer. All of his customers are working from home.

On the plus side, airlines are now waiving change fees to attract passengers. Some are also still limiting capacity to facilitate social distancing.

My family took one flight this summer to visit a sick family member. But other than that, our next flight is planned for spring break. I really hope that the virus numbers are low so we can resume air travel.

Are you surprised by these numbers? When are you planning your next flight?

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