Airlines log busiest days since early 2020 over Thanksgiving but omicron poses new challenge
US airlines over Thanksgiving week had some of their busiest days since before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic as travelers returned in droves to reunite with family after a subdued holiday last year. The TSA screened nearly 2.5m people on Sunday, the most since Feb. 15, 2020. That was about 15% below the number of people the TSA screened two years earlier. From Nov. 22 through Sunday 14.4m people passed through TSA, more than double the 6.4m a year ago but down from 16.4m in 2019. Airports, planes and parking lots were packed but travelers and airlines lucked out with mostly good weather and small numbers of cancellations, unlike the mass disruptions that affected hundreds of thousands of passengers during several episodes since this summer. Airlines including Southwest and American had offered flight attendants and other staff extra pay or bonuses for working holiday trips and meeting attendance goals. American, which offered flight attendants up to triple pay for peak-day trips, said it flew 5.6m passengers from Nov. 19 through Sunday. “And while we’re proud of these numbers and what they represent for American and the industry, it’s the way we operated this holiday travel season that is even more impressive,” COO David Seymour said in a staff note on Monday. American flew 1,500 flights a day more than its “major competitors,” he said. It canceled fewer than 0.5% of its mainline and regional flights and 85% were on time, slightly better than the airline’s goal, Seymour wrote. Despite the surge in air travel over the holiday, airlines are now facing a new challenge as more countries report cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, just as international travel was rebounding as more nations loosened travel rules. Airline executives said bookings surged when travel restrictions that barred international tourism from more than 30 countries in the US were lifted on Nov. 8. International travel is key to carriers’ financial recovery from the pandemic.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2021-11-30/general/airlines-log-busiest-days-since-early-2020-over-thanksgiving-but-omicron-poses-new-challenge
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Airlines log busiest days since early 2020 over Thanksgiving but omicron poses new challenge
US airlines over Thanksgiving week had some of their busiest days since before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic as travelers returned in droves to reunite with family after a subdued holiday last year. The TSA screened nearly 2.5m people on Sunday, the most since Feb. 15, 2020. That was about 15% below the number of people the TSA screened two years earlier. From Nov. 22 through Sunday 14.4m people passed through TSA, more than double the 6.4m a year ago but down from 16.4m in 2019. Airports, planes and parking lots were packed but travelers and airlines lucked out with mostly good weather and small numbers of cancellations, unlike the mass disruptions that affected hundreds of thousands of passengers during several episodes since this summer. Airlines including Southwest and American had offered flight attendants and other staff extra pay or bonuses for working holiday trips and meeting attendance goals. American, which offered flight attendants up to triple pay for peak-day trips, said it flew 5.6m passengers from Nov. 19 through Sunday. “And while we’re proud of these numbers and what they represent for American and the industry, it’s the way we operated this holiday travel season that is even more impressive,” COO David Seymour said in a staff note on Monday. American flew 1,500 flights a day more than its “major competitors,” he said. It canceled fewer than 0.5% of its mainline and regional flights and 85% were on time, slightly better than the airline’s goal, Seymour wrote. Despite the surge in air travel over the holiday, airlines are now facing a new challenge as more countries report cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, just as international travel was rebounding as more nations loosened travel rules. Airline executives said bookings surged when travel restrictions that barred international tourism from more than 30 countries in the US were lifted on Nov. 8. International travel is key to carriers’ financial recovery from the pandemic.<br/>
