U.S. air travel reaches a level high during holidays amid Covid cases surge, according to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Data showed there were 1,192,881 travelers who passed through security checkpoints in airports on Saturday.
Air travel remains in a slump compared to previous years but hit peak level during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays even if health experts and elected officials already warned people to limit travel and family gatherings.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts, explained that the coronavirus pandemic could become worse in the next couple of weeks as the U.S. faces delayed consequences of post-Christmas holiday travel.
“This is what happens. It’s terrible, it’s unfortunate, but it was predictable,” Dr. Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Data from Johns Hopkins University said that December was the most fatal and infectious month of the pandemic in the U.S. with an average of more than 2,600 deaths each day.
Three states also detected cases of the new coronavirus strain among people without travel history.
Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams called on Americans to wear masks and social distance to prevent the predicted spike of infections.
“What we do now matters,” Adams said during an interview on CNN. “If you gathered over the holidays outside of your household without a mask, there are still measures you can take right now.”
“You still can self-quarantine. You still can get tested, knowing that greater than 50% of the spread now is among people who are asymptomatic,” he added.
In November, U.S. air travel increased during Thanksgiving. TSA screened about 1.2 million people at airports. However, this was considered down by about 60% from the nearly 2.9 million people who underwent screening earlier.
Airlines including American and United gave employees extra pay to manage the increase in demand, while Delta Air Lines had to cancel flights because of a shortage of pilots over the holiday break.
Meanwhile, JetBlue Airways predicted that its revenue would drop 70% in the fourth quarter compared with the same time last year.
Airline passenger traffic
In terms of the entire year of 2020, airline passenger traffic fell by 67% in 2020, a study from travel data and analytics company Cirium suggests.
“The pandemic and its consequences wiped out 21 years of global passenger traffic growth in a matter of months, reducing traffic this year to levels last seen in 1999,” said Cirium in a press release.
“In comparison to last year, passenger traffic is estimated to be down 67% in 2020,” the firm stated.
Only 2.9 trillion global revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs) were posted in 2020, compared to 8.7 trillion in 2019. RPKs are used as a tool for assessing airline traffic.
The coronavirus pandemic hit the aviation industry hard as countries shut down their borders in order to contain the spread of the disease.
Cirium’s data shows that airlines ran 16.8 million flights from Jan. 1 to Dec. 20, 2020. That is a decline from 33.2 million in the same period in 2019.
More than 40 airlines stopped or suspended operations, while experts predict more to close in 2021, Cirium said.
Meanwhile, Cirium’s Airline Insights Review 2020 report shows that Asia-Pacific and North America were the “fastest to establish themselves on the long path to recovery.”
