Air travel is back. Kinda.
The latest data from the TSA reveals that over the Memorial Day weekend (Friday to Monday, inclusive) more than 7.1 million travelers passed through an American airport checkpoint. Those numbers are the highest that the TSA has reported since early March 2020, before the pandemic ground the industry to a halt.
Airlines rejoice
Airline stocks rose modestly on the news, suggesting the numbers were slightly higher than investors might have expected — although the traffic remains around 20-25% lower than a typical day in a normal year (2019 in the chart).
It's going to be interesting to see just how high these numbers rise over the summer, as restrictions continue to ease and everyone jets off for their 2020 vacations (a year late). Whether they eventually rise to 2.5m+ travelers per day seems likely to depend on whether business travel makes a come back. TSA officials have said, so far, that business travel is the one thing that hasn't returned. Does it need to? Or can those meetings and conferences stay virtual forever?
