Airport traffic in the US is almost back to normal.
The latest daily data from the TSA shows that an average of 2.18 million passengers have been screened per day over the last 30 days, just under 90% of the 2.4 million that it screened over the same 30 day period in 2019.
Vacation chaos
Those numbers are way ahead of 2021, where travel was still disrupted, and it suggests that the appetite for travel hasn't permanently diminished much. The only problem is that some airlines are still running lean after the last two years, and are struggling to cope with the passenger numbers. Indeed, airlines are already cancelling thousands of flights as we head into the busiest part of the year.
Southwest Airlines has cancelled 20,000 flights, Delta is cancelling 100 flights per day from July 1st to early August and European operators have struggled to get enough staff to maintain their schedules. In Dublin last week 1,000 passengers missed flights simply because of lines that were too long.
