TSA reported that 1,369,180 travelers passed security checkpoints on Saturday, the day after air passengers set a new pandemic record when 1,468,516 traveled through TSA security.
This is a worrying signal for health experts: although millions of Americans have been vaccinated, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend that people avoid traveling. So far, he has refused to issue new travel guidelines for vaccinated Americans, due to concerns over travel spikes that the United States faced during previous vacation periods.
“What we saw is that we have outbreaks after people start traveling, we saw after July 4th, we saw after Labor Day, we saw after the Christmas holidays,” said CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, at last week in response to a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a Covid-19 briefing.
Walensky said that as 90% of people remain unvaccinated, the CDC will wait to update the guidelines.
A dubious milestone
Despite warnings from the CDC, the U.S. airline industry reached a dubious milestone last week: for the first time since the start of the pandemic, air travel has increased a year ago.
This is a positive sign for battered airlines, but it is also an incredibly low hurdle to be overcome. The increase is still a heavily depressed level – about half of the air traffic in the 2019 pre-pandemic.
Still, the aviation industry is looking for signs of pent-up demand for air travel. At the end of the December vacation period, TSA recorded five consecutive days of more than 1 million.
In another sign of hope, airlines are reporting 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 total of $ 32 billion in losses in 2020, excluding special items. But investors are becoming more optimistic: Shares in South-west (LUV), Alaska Air (ALK), JetBlue (JBLU) and Hawaiian Airlines (THERE IS) are already above pre-pandemic levels, while American (AAL), Delta (DAL) and Spirit (SAVE ) are close to that benchmark. Only shares of United (UAL) are significantly below where they were at the end of January 2020.