Airline industry in the United States of America are showing signs of recovery from deep impacts of COVID-19 pandemic as passenger traffic in the North American country have gone above levels from pre pandemic numbers.
For the first time since COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, airline passenger traffic numbers are running above the comparable levels of 2019. According to data from Transportation Security Administration, more than 15 million people went through Transportation Security Administration security portals in the past seven days.
This is 30000 people more than what was posted in 2019 during the same time period. In percentage terms, it is almost 1 percentage increase in total number of passengers in the last seven days. TSA data also states that rolling seven-day total since Oct. 27 have stayed above the levels from 2019 during the same time period.
News reports also state that weekly passenger numbers are still below the levels in 2019. Even though there has been a significant increase in number of airline passengers when compared to 2020 and 2021, staffing shortages, reduced airline schedules and issues such as delay in maintenance etc are hampering down possibilities of a full re-emergence from the shadows of COVID-19 pandemic.
The recent numbers of airline passengers are also well below the total passengers during summer of 2019 when the numbers hit 18 million.
COVID-19 Pandemic and resultant lockdown around the globe have severely impacted airline industry. Airline companies were forced to lay-off workers as almost all aircraft were grounded in various airports and yards. The industry also witnessed huge decrease in revenue and profits. In the United States of America, some smaller airline companies even filed for bankruptcy after laying off all the staff.
Airline industry which accounts for nearly 5 percentage of the entire gross domestic product in the economy of the United States of America saw the number of passengers declining by 40 percentage in 2020. In 2021, the industry generated revenue of 193 billion dollars which was much lower than 240 billion dollars in 2019.
