Holiday getaway pushes airport traffic to pandemic high

BERKELEY, Calif. — The Fourth of July holiday weekend is jamming U.S. airports with their biggest crowds since the pandemic began in 2020.

About 2.49 million passengers went through security checkpoints at U.S. airports Friday, surpassing the previous pandemic-era record of 2.46 million reached earlier in the week, according to Transportation Security Administration data.

The escalating numbers show leisure travelers aren’t being deterred from flying by rising fares, the ongoing spread of COVID-19 or worries about recurring flight delays and cancellations.

Friday’s passenger volume marked a 13% increase from July 1 last year, which fell on the Thursday before Fourth of July. This year’s number of passengers going through U.S. airports also eclipsed the 2.35 million screened at security checkpoints on Friday before the Fourth of July in 2019, but that was nearly a week ahead of Independence Day.

At Boston’s Logan Airport, traffic for the week was up 127% over the same time in 2020. And on Saturday alone there were 1,163 arrivals and departures compared to 859 in 2021, and 466 in the depths of the pandemic in 2020.

In a more telling sign of how close U.S. air travel is reverting back to pre-pandemic conditions, an average of 2.33 million passengers have passed through security checkpoints at domestic airports during the seven days ending July 1. That was close to the seven-day average of roughly 2.38 million passengers during the same 2019 period, according to the TSA.

But airlines have struggled to keep up with the surging demand amid staffing shortages and an assortment of other issues that have resulted in recurring waves of exasperating flight delays and cancellations.

Many airlines, including Delta, Southwest and JetBlue, have responded by curtailing their summer schedules in an effort to reduce the inconveniences — and backlash — caused by delays and cancellations. They are using larger planes on average to carry more passengers while they scramble to hire more pilots.

Headaches continued Friday, although they weren’t as bad as they have been at other times in recent months. There were more than 6,800 flight delays and another 587 flight cancellations affecting U.S. airports Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

The trouble spilled into Saturday with thunderstorms complicating things on the East Coast and parts of the Midwest. By late Saturday, nearly 4,000 flights had been delayed and more than 600 had been canceled at U.S. airports, according to FlightAware.

In Boston, delays numbered 328 on Saturday, with 40 cancellations. Those numbers improved Sunday with just 91 delays and 21 cancellations, according to FlightAware data.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/CfNOklH