The TSA reported that 1,369,180 travelers passed through the security post on Saturday, a day after air passengers set a new pandemic record, when 1,468,516 traveled through TSA security.
This is a worrying sign for health experts: although millions of Americans have been vaccinated, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people avoid travel. It has so far refused to issue new guidelines on travel for vaccinated Americans due to concerns caused by travel-related congestion the United States has experienced during previous holiday periods.
“What we saw was that we saw increases after people started traveling, we saw it after July 4th, we saw it after Labor Day, we saw it after the Christmas holidays,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said last week in response to a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a Covid-19 briefing.
Walensky said because 90% of the people are still not vaccinated, the CDC will wait to update the lead.
A Doubtful Milestone
Despite warnings from the CDC, the U.S. airline industry reached a dubious milestone last week: for the first time since the pandemic began, air travel is higher than a year ago.
This is a positive sign for battered airlines, but it is also a very low obstacle to fix. The increase is still a strong depressive level – about half of air traffic since the pre-pandemic 2019.
The bruised airline industry is still looking for signs of the pent-up demand for air travel. At the end of the December holiday period, the TSA recorded five 1 million plus days in a row.
In another hopeful sign, airlines are announcing better bookings for this summer, with American Airlines CEO Doug Parker saying on Monday that the company is “getting very close to 2019 in total bookings.”
All airlines are expected to report losses again in the first quarter, after a combined loss of $ 32 billion in 2020, excluding special items. But investors are becoming more optimistic: shares of Suidwes (LUV), Alaska Air (ALK), JetBlue (JBLU) and Hawaiian Airlines (HA) is already higher than the pre-pandemic levels, while American (AAL), Delta (DAL) and spirit (SAVE) is close to the benchmark. Only shares of United (UAL) is significantly lower than where they were at the end of January 2020.