A hint of the damage done to the US airline industry by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns has emerged from the annual passenger numbers from the America’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) which said in a statement on Monday that it processed 500 fewer people in 2020 than in 2019.
The TSA said that was a drop of 61% from the previous year, a fall that highlights the depths of the slump in the huge US airline industry and the size of the task that lies ahead of the sector if it is to survive what is looking like another rough 12 months.
The TSA said it screened 324 million passengers throughout its airport security checkpoints in 2020, down from 824 million in 2019.
The fall backs up data on jet fuel production which in the final weeks of 2020 was down 39% from the same period at the end of 2019.
Given this sharp fall it’s no wonder American Airlines shares are down 44% in the past year, United shares are off 52%, Delta shares are down 32% and Southwest 17%.
Some US analysts are starting to wonder if the country’s big four airlines could become three this year.
The TSA data indicated there had been a pick-up in December numbers. On Sunday, TSA screened 1.327 million people at airport checkpoints, the most since mid-March, but that was still 45% lower than the same day in 2020.
Some optimism was evident in the statement – the agency saying it anticipates “daily travel volumes will continue to rise steadily and follow seasonal patterns” but it also noted that expects volume will remain well below pre-pandemic levels “through most of 2021.”
Airlines for America, an industry trade group, said airline passenger volumes were down 57% over 2019 levels in mid-December, with domestic travel down 56% and international air travel down 66%.
Many analysts do not think US domestic or international travel will recover until widespread vaccinations take place. They are slowly rolling out in the US, UK, parts of Europe, China, Russia and India, but there is no data on the success or otherwise.
Major airlines lost more than $36 billion in the first nine months of 2020 but Congress has approved $15 billion in new payroll assistance as part of a COVID-19 relief package to keep thousands of aviation workers on the payroll through March 31.
The U.S. Transportation Department said last month that US passenger airlines as of mid-October employed 9.1% fewer full-time equivalents employees versus the prior month to 368,162 — down 36,707 jobs in a month and down 91,871 since mid-March.
Business travel remains especially hard hit. Planes are on average just 61% full compared with 89% in the same week last year while non-US citizen travel to the United States was down 84% in November.
US travel to and from 14 of the 20 top foreign country destinations were down 90% or more in October.
The depth of the slump was on April 14 when the TSA said it screened a record low number of passengers – 87,500 – just 4% of passenger numbers on the same day in April, 2019.
“During TSA’s historically busiest time of year, average travel volume per day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve in 2020 continued to fluctuate between a low of 24 percent and a high of 61 percent of 2019 travel volume during the same period,” the agency said.
