Just over a million passengers went through airport security checkpoints Sunday, a recovery milestone that shows both how far air travel has come from its worst days in April and how far it has to go to return to pre-pandemic numbers.
The Transportation Security Administration said it processed 1,031,505 people at checkpoints Sunday, bringing the total for the four-day weekend to more than 3.7 million.
It’s a sign of the slow but continual recovery since April, the low point of the pandemic for the airline industry. Only 87,534 people went through checkpoints on April 14.
Still, the million passengers represent only about 40% of the number of travelers on the comparable day a year ago, when 2.6 million people started journeys at U.S. airports.
The milestone comes after months of efforts by airlines, airports and other groups to convince passengers that airplanes are safe to travel on, even if COVID-19 infection and death rates in many parts of the country begin to climb once again.
“TSA has been diligent in our efforts to ensure checkpoints are clean, safe and healthy for frontline workers and airline passengers, implementing new protocols and deploying state-of-the-art technologies that improve security and reduce physical contact,” said a statement from TSA Administrator David Pekoske.
Many of those passengers made their way through North Texas, too. DFW International Airport handled a total of 137,000 passengers on Friday, 115,000 on Saturday and 142,000 on Sunday, according to preliminary estimates of arriving, departing and connecting passengers.
Dallas Love Field saw about 11,000 new and connecting passengers according to early estimates, said airport spokesman Chris Perry.
TSA daily traffic numbers, which the agency began reporting near the beginning of the pandemic, show that airline traffic tends to spike sharply on Thursdays, Friday and Sundays.
That’s because travel is now dominated by leisure travelers. Business travel is recovering much more slowly than leisure, and airline executives think it could be five to six years before business travel is back to pre-pandemic levels.
That’s a trend that airline leaders have noted, since the work-from-home trend of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more people leaving on Thursdays and working remotely from a new destination for a day before a leisure trip.
“A big part of it is acknowledging that the customer is changing, and historically the network airline business was really leveraged around a small percentage of customers who flew disproportionately for business,” said American Airlines chief revenue officer Vasu Raja in an investor call last month.
International traffic has also evaporated, even though countries are starting to open slowly with required testing before travel.
Lately, airport traffic has been dropping in the middle of the week, particularly Monday through Wednesday. On those days, passenger traffic is hovering around 30% of pre-pandemic levels.
Airplanes were also about 59% full last week, according to trade group Airlines for America. That compares to about 85% in 2019 and far below break-even levels for airlines.
