As the chart above shows, in January-February 2022 traffic through TSA checkpoints was only 19% below that recorded in 1Q2019 pre-pandemic.
And this is so despite the slow recovery of business travel - which means that leisure travel - including travel by remote workers who take twice as many holiday trips as workers tied to a workplace - in the current quarter exceeds that of 1Q2019.
And also in 2022, because of the nature of this new breed of travelers, travel is likely going to be spread over more months of the year, and not so much concentrated in the summer months as it was pre-pandemic.
However, border restrictions and testing and vaccination requirements continue to slow the recovery of international travel:
- US outbound travel is now at less than 2/3 of 2019 level overall, less than 50% to Europe.
- And fewer than 50% of 2019 numbers of US inbound visitors came to the US in January.
Stay tuned for updates.
