When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the US in March, it brought air travel to a near standstill. But US air travel hit an important milestone on Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration announced on Monday.
The TSA screened 1,031,505 people on Sunday, marking the first day since March that more than 1 million people took to the skies, a TSA spokesperson said on Twitter. That's only 40% of the roughly 2.6 million people that boarded commercial flights the same day last year, but Sunday's numbers confirm that air travel is creeping back to normal levels — at least for now.
On any given day in 2019, US airports would have seen around 2 million to 2.7 million travelers, according to data published by the TSA, but the pandemic reduced air travel to a trickle in March. Demand hit a low point on April 14 when the TSA counted just 87,534 travelers, representing a 96% decrease compared with the same day last year.
Air travel has climbed gradually since April, seeing a bump in passengers around holidays like July 4, but the overall state of the airline industry remains bleak. By and large, those returning to the air are people traveling for leisure, not the business travelers who tend be more profitable for airlines.
Thanksgiving weekend kicks off the holiday travel season and is the most important time of the year for airlines — but November bookings are down as much as 88%, according to airline analytics firm OAG. The struggling airlines are hoping and preparing for a last-minute bump in bookings, since travelers during the pandemic have been booking flights closer to departure than ever.
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