Despite a long summer of airline chaos, more people flew this Labor Day than in 2019
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- More people traveled on Labor Day this year than in 2019, according to a chart from TSA.
- Over the past year, travel demand has stabilized to 80%-95% of 2019, one travel analyst said.
- Flight numbers have been spiking during holidays like New Year's, Memorial Day, and July 4th.
This summer's "flightmare" of mass flight cancellations and delays didn't stop people from heading to the airport this Labor Day.
Flight numbers for Monday's Labor Day holiday — and the Friday before — surpassed the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, according to a chart from the Transportation Security Administration. The chart also shows that throughout Labor Day weekend, flight numbers remained consistently higher than they have been over the past two years.
With COVID-19 case counts dropping, and pandemic restrictions easing up, people might finally be scratching their travel itch. Over the past year, flight numbers have picked up significantly from the prior two years.
Adam Gordon, a director at Boston Consulting Group who focuses on aviation, told Insider by email that travel demand has stabilized to somewhere between 80% to 95% of its 2019 volume over the past year. He has noticed that travel rates have spiked during holiday periods like New Year's, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day.
Still, the spike around Labor Day represents the biggest surge in travel this year. Gordon noted that August 28 — the Sunday before the Labor Day holiday — was the most heavily traveled day of 2022.
"We attribute this strength to a combination of factors: people squeezing in end of summer-vacations, return to campus travel and of course underlying demand for long weekend travel," Gordon told Insider.
He added that it's possible that travel demand on the whole might wane as people fulfill their "pent-up" travel plans.
Still, he believes that the holidays will continue to draw travelers to the airport.
"COVID impacts have proven hard to forecast, but we don't see any reason why the upcoming holiday season won't continue to see robust demand, spiking above 2019 levels on key travel dates," he said.