Not arguing here, and I appreciate pangolin, Sox, Brad's awesome observations, but my opinion is if the demand was there, our very smart MBA's at the airlines would make sure we had the capacity. Especially in "these times." I doubt they would be asleep at the switch and missing opportunities.

Some other travel related sites I follow claim that bookings are sporadic and many are "booked" but folks are no-showing. Not sure how that works with refunds etc or ticket change policies but in any event, it seems like of the many folks who watch the travel sector, nobody has a good crystal ball on the numbers, except these very useful TSA numbers.

Capacity article: https://www.businesstravelnews.com/G...0-Percent-Mark

I agree. It is not a capacity issue on Tuesday/Wednesday. Yes capacity is lower those days, no it’s not too low. Capacity is down to match demand. Airlines are pulling back on the already lower Covid planned Aug and Sept schedules from just a few weeks ago, so they are taking capacity out to much demand. In June to be fair they were behind the curve. They got out ahead of it for Aug and Sept and are correcting close in.

Ok before the Wednesday numbers come out, last 3 weeks and what could be reasonably expected this week:

total 2020/%of last year same weekday/2019 total

570k/22.3/2.56 Mil
573k/22.5/2.54 Mil
595k/24.5/2.43 Mil

With 2019 totals dropping each week we can expect the same today. That means the 2020 total doesn’t even need to go up to move the % of last year up. So if we don’t crack 600k, not a big deal if the % goes up. That said I do think 600-610k with a gain from 24.5% to 25.0% is what I am expecting.

24.7 - still consistent. However October, absent a payroll support renewal will see the airlines gut their schedules because 5 days per week is no longer required. It will be to match demand.

Actual: 590k/24.7%/2.39 mil

So like I said, with the declining 2019 numbers, we were able to have a slight drop of 5k this week over last but still move the % up very slightly (24.5 to 24.7).

8-12/Wed: 24.7% (24.69)

What was encouraging about yesterday’s number was last year week over week we dropped 100k. And the trend the past few days was the same last year. So safe to say we’re off summer peak at this point last year and starting a slow decline ahead of a steeper decline post Labor Day.

So despite loosing 100k wow last year, this year we gained about 18k. So we not only have not yet started the slight decline we did last year, we are still growing. This will be an interesting metric to watch over the next 4 weeks. Are we declining faster, the same, less or the 4th option - still growing, than we did last year?

we may have peaked for the summer. Not sure. maybe another week of data will tell us for sure.

https://www.radarbox.com/statistics/us_us

Numbers for Thur 8/13: 761,821
Same day 2019: 2,602,446
29.2% YoY
2.4% WoW growth

08-13/Thursday: 29.3%

almost touching 30% again which is a good thing.