On Sunday, October 18, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the United States has registered 1,031,505 passengers traveling through its checkpoints in the USA, crossing the one million mark for the first time since March 16.
Although the total number of passengers was still down about 60 percent compared to last year’s numbers, there are now almost 12 times as many passengers compared to the lowest point on April 14 with only 87,534 passengers going through TSA checkpoints.
This comes amid the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Countries have issued various travel warning and restrictions to slow the spread of Covid-19, making air travel difficult to impossible depending on the location.
A full recovery to 2019 passenger numbers is likely still a few years away, causing many airlines to retire aircraft types earlier than planned, putting others in long term storage and laying off employees. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicts a full market recovery will not happen until 2024 or even 2025.
Jan-Hendrik is an aviation enthusiast from Germany, loves to travel the world and fly on as many aircraft as possible. His first flight was with a Condor 757 to Spain and has been interested in aviation ever since. His fields of expertise are aircraft accidents and passenger experience (PaxEx).
