Update to the TSA traveler throughput numbers. Traffic yesterday (Friday) increased by 38.9% vs the previous Friday. Traveler throughput follows a cyclical pattern by day of week with Friday usually being the biggest day of the week (at least since the start of the covid-19 crisis). Yesterday, saw 171,563 travelers people processed by TSA. Last Friday, TSA handled 123,464.

What's sort of interesting about the numbers is that the first few days of this week averaged about a 20% increase in travelers over last week. The last two days were right at a 38% increase. Is that the beginning of an acceleration in the trend? Hard to tell with such a small sample size, but fingers crossed.

Here's a visualization of the data since Mar 29. Each line represents one week. The purple line is the current week. The blue line is the week of Mar 29. The yellow line is the low point: the week of April 12.

Attachment 5295

And remember, concessions are FOREVER. Eventually, these traveler numbers will return to pre-covid numbers and higher. However long that takes, recovering what our profession gives up in concessions will take much longer than the amount of time it takes for passengers to come back. If history is any guide, we will never fully recover just as we haven't fully recovered from the concessions the pilots before us in the 80's, 90's, and 00's gave up. By failing to hold their ground, they damaged the profession: turning what was once one of the most respected, high-paying, and desirable careers into something less and more middling. Is that what we want our legacy to be?