One of the most impacted activities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic was air travel.
Through early 2020, TSA traveler through-put remained depressed, reaching a low in the early summer months. Since then, air travel has slowly been recovering, seeing an inflection in through-put this year as vaccines became increasingly accessible.
Although through-put is up 840% compared to last year, it still remains approximately 40% lower than pre-COVID levels.
Aside from being a direct indicator on the state of air travel, TSA traveler through-put can potentially shed some light on how comfortable consumers are returning to ‘normal’ activities.
Combining this data with insights from consumer surveys paints an interesting picture. A portion of consumers are largely excited to not only resume traveling, but also enjoy other social activities such as dining out, shopping, and visiting movie theaters.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the recovery progresses, and what consumer habits prevail and which subside.
(featured image courtesy of fellow contributor Michele Schneider)
Twitter: @_SeanDavid
The author or his firm have positions in mentioned securities at the time of publication. Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.
