Air Travel Holding Its Own Despite Omicron

Between the end of the Thanksgiving Holiday period and the beginning of the Omicron variant, many experts predicted a dip in air travel until the Christmas period picked up again later this month.

So far, that lull hasn’t materialized.

In fact, airline traffic is holding its own following the 10-day Thanksgiving holiday travel period from November 19-28 as defined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

According to the daily security checkpoint screenings logged by the TSA, in the 12 days following the Thanksgiving holiday from November 29 to December 10, 22,091,641 people boarded an airplane from U.S. airports.

During the same period in 2019, the barometer which the industry uses to compare the current travel recovery from the nearly two-year pandemic, 26,409,384 fliers were counted.

That’s 84 percent of the capacity that has flown in the last 12 compared to 2019.

An early Hanukah this year certainly helped, as the Jewish holiday ran from November 28=December 6. But 84 percent is a healthy number considering neither business travel nor international leisure travel levels are even remotely close to returning to normal.

Or when you factor in the onset of the Omicron variant, which was discovered last month and inspired another round of travel bans and restrictions on international visitors to the U.S.

The latest numbers are piggybacking a strong Thanksgiving when almost 21 million people were processed through U.S. airports during the 10-day span. That included 2,451,300 people who took to the air on Sunday, November 28 – a pandemic-era record for a single day and the most fliers since February 28, 2020, right before the virus hit U.S. shores.