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The TSA reported that 1,369,180 travelers passed through security checkpoints on Saturday, a day after airline passengers set a new pandemic record, when 1,468,516 passed through TSA security.
It’s a worrying sign for health experts: Although millions of Americans have been vaccinated, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend that people avoid travel. It has so far refused to issue new travel guidelines for vaccinated Americans over concerns over the travel-related surges the United States has experienced in previous holiday periods.
“What we’ve seen is we have spikes after people start traveling, we’ve seen it after July 4th, we’ve seen it after Labor Day, we’ve seen it after the Christmas break, “CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said last week in response to a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a Covid-19 briefing.
Walensky said that because 90% of people are still unvaccinated, the CDC will wait to update its guidelines.
A dubious step
Despite warnings from the CDC, the U.S. airline industry took a dubious step last week: For the first time since the start of the pandemic, air travel is up from a year ago.
That’s a positive sign for battered airlines, but it’s also an incredibly low hurdle to overcome. The increase is still a strongly depressed level – around half of air traffic compared to the pre-pandemic 2019 period.
Yet the battered airline industry is looking for signs of pent-up demand for air travel. By the end of the December vacation period, the TSA had logged five over a million days in a row.
In another encouraging sign, airlines are announcing better bookings for this summer, with American Airlines CEO Doug Parker saying on Monday the company “is getting closer to 2019 in terms of total bookings.”
All airlines are expected to report losses again in the first quarter, after a total of $ 32 billion in losses in 2020, excluding special items. But investors are increasingly optimistic: the stocks of South West (LUV), Alaska Air (ALK), JetBlue (JBLU) and Hawaiian Airlines (HE OWNS) are already above prepandemic levels, while American (AAL), Delta (OF) and Mind (SAVE) are close to this landmark. Only the actions of United (UAL) are down significantly from their level at the end of January 2020.
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