I wanted to create a thread for details on Airlines recovery in bookings, and I didn't want to overwhelm the TSA thread (I will post links to the data below):

While the numbers seem excruciatingly low currently, the data is trending in the right direction especially with regards to leisure travel

Airlines Reporting Corporation data: Big takeaway is Corporate Travel bookings are still way down, but are slightly up from their low point of -96.3% yoy. Obviously leisure travel is leading the way.


Some weakness in fares as well


A4A data: Revenue is still lagging behind, although I wonder if some of that could be attributed to a lack of international traffic. Given we are in peak TATL season, a significant amount of revenue in May would be coming from international flights, that were almost nonexistent.


Kalibri Labs data: As you can see, starting in May Chicago & NYC started to fall behind booking wise compared to their peers who have reopened sooner. These are measuring new bookings, not net bookings



https://www.kalibrilabs.com/industry-health
https://www2.arccorp.com/articles-trend ... ronavirus/
https://www.airlines.org/dataset/impact ... -updates/#

Nicely confirms AA's report that Texas and Florida are down only 40% YOY for them. The booking date in the Kalibri Labs data tells only when a booking was made, not what time period it was made for, right?

There's no way to directly correspond this to actual boarding during the same time period except as a future looking proxy? During the 5/25 - 5/31 time interval we were definmitely not at 20% of normal in terms of O&D passengers I'd assume.

SumChristianus wrote:

Nicely confirms AA's report that Texas and Florida are down only 40% YOY for them.

How does it do that, specifically? I don't see numbers that even allude to Texas (or Dallas as a sub-set) down 40%, let alone for AA itself.

Nice to see some data. Thanks, OP.

SumChristianus wrote:

Nicely confirms AA's report that Texas and Florida are down only 40% YOY for them. The booking date in the Kalibri Labs data tells only when a booking was made, not what time period it was made for, right?

There's no way to directly correspond this to actual boarding during the same time period except as a future looking proxy? During the 5/25 - 5/31 time interval we were definmitely not at 20% of normal in terms of O&D passengers I'd assume.

Yeah, essentially that's the case. The booking could be for anytime between now and December 31st

Although, there is this data, but it is lagging behind by a week or two (Last data point was May 17th). I'd also say this data is harder to interpret, as the April & May numbers appear way better than they were, since it doesn't take into account refunds:




https://public.tableau.com/profile/the. ... PortalHome

MIflyer12 wrote:

SumChristianus wrote:

Nicely confirms AA's report that Texas and Florida are down only 40% YOY for them.

How does it do that, specifically? I don't see numbers that even allude to Texas (or Dallas as a sub-set) down 40%, let alone for AA itself.

Nice to see some data. Thanks, OP.

While Dallas is lagging behind definitely, the rest of Texas is not. I saw a report that Corpus Christi was actually up yoy in terms of hotel occupancy.
https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article110933.html

Similar story for the rest of the gulf coast areas where AA mentioned they were adding more capacity next month

Looks like MIA might be down to -40% by next weeks bookings report

As of Wednesday, at the employee townhall event, Scott Kirby said bookings were down 92% compared to same first week in June 2019.

UA also summarised that May ended with 88% decline in bookings and 94% decline in revenue from them.

While there might be some brighter spots, it is largely unknown if the customer will really fly what they booked, and if ongoing and future cancellations end up exceed new bookings leaving the airline with zero net new income.

It's no wonder that leisure travel is leading the way. Prices are *low*. I just booked R/T between CMH and LAS, mid-July. I haven't paid so little to travel between the two cities in at least 15 years, and I'm sure that's a story many will tell in the next few weeks between many city pairs. I'm paying less than 5c/passenger mile, including bags.

LFs are still abysmal, but steadily improving. Passenger counts for AS are now many multiples of what they were a month ago, and plans are to start slowly bringing aircraft back out of storage. Still a long way to go, though.

TSA numbers for 6/4 came in at 391K, up from a low point of just 87K in mid April. Last year’s daily counts were anywhere from 2.1 to 2.6M depending on the day, so we still have a long way to go.

But signs are encouraging.

It's certainly worth noting too that since a huge portion of travelers who canceled itineraries received credits rather than refunds. They aren't hemorrhaging money through refunds at the rate they previously were, but more butts in seats doesn't necessarily mean the airline is generating new revenue. I would assume that the massive amounts of credit people have received will depress their new earnings for the next year at least.

What does leisure/other mean vs. online? Are a significant number of people not booking online?

cledaybuck wrote:

What does leisure/other mean vs. online? Are a significant number of people not booking online?

I believe online means booked directly through the airline, or without a travel agent/website/company/e.t.c

LAXintl wrote:

As of Wednesday, at the employee townhall event, Scott Kirby said bookings were down 92% compared to same first week in June 2019.

UA also summarised that May ended with 88% decline in bookings and 94% decline in revenue from them.

While there might be some brighter spots, it is largely unknown if the customer will really fly what they booked, and if ongoing and future cancellations end up exceed new bookings leaving the airline with zero net new income.

I wouldn't use UA as a benchmark as you also have to take into account that UA is lagging behind, pax/booking wise. Not criticizing their strategy, but they are carrying significantly less passengers than WN, DL, and AA currently. Therefore, you can imagine their bookings would be lower as well.

They've been carrying 40,000 pax, which is only slightly above AA's daily average in April.

While I don't have exact numbers of cancellations, it is quite safe to assume that cancellations are going down. While it is obviously not a perfect proxy, hotel occupancy is climbing relatively quickly, meaning more and more people are actually making trips.

I believe nearly all US airlines reported positive net bookings back in May, and consumer sentiment is significantly better now

atcsundevil wrote:

It's certainly worth noting too that since a huge portion of travelers who canceled itineraries received credits rather than refunds. They aren't hemorrhaging money through refunds at the rate they previously were, but more butts in seats doesn't necessarily mean the airline is generating new revenue. I would assume that the massive amounts of credit people have received will depress their new earnings for the next year at least.

Very true, something to watch moving forward.

One thing to keep in mind is that barring a second COVID19 wave does not stunt things sooner, the summer travel period will be over in less than 3 months, so as demand climbs now, it should tapper off and then decline come late August anyhow.

ContnlEliteCMH wrote:

It's no wonder that leisure travel is leading the way. Prices are *low*. I just booked R/T between CMH and LAS, mid-July. I haven't paid so little to travel between the two cities in at least 15 years, and I'm sure that's a story many will tell in the next few weeks between many city pairs. I'm paying less than 5c/passenger mile, including bags.

Literally gambling with health to save a few dollars.

Doubt the majority of Americans anywhere close to making a similar decision.

There is a good chance that bookings will pick up even faster in the next couple of months. Not that I think things are going to get that much better, but there will be a ton of capacity coming back online and a lot of price sensitive customers. NK is going from operating around 10% of their schedule right now to 70% of their schedule in July. G4 is apparently going to over 85% of their schedule in the near future. F9 is also adding a lot of capacity back. And they are all going to the familiar places of Florida, LAS and CUN. ULCCs has figured out now that price sensitive customers are back, they can really take it to the legacy airlines.

For all talk about AA seeing booking only down by 40% in Florida and Texas, let's see with the ULCCs back in force, what kind of yield they will be getting. Whether or not that will pay of the cost of operating the flight is a big question.

tphuang wrote:

There is a good chance that bookings will pick up even faster in the next couple of months. Not that I think things are going to get that much better, but there will be a ton of capacity coming back online and a lot of price sensitive customers. NK is going from operating around 10% of their schedule right now to 70% of their schedule in July. G4 is apparently going to over 85% of their schedule in the near future. F9 is also adding a lot of capacity back. And they are all going to the familiar places of Florida, LAS and CUN. ULCCs has figured out now that price sensitive customers are back, they can really take it to the legacy airlines.

For all talk about AA seeing booking only down by 40% in Florida and Texas, let's see with the ULCCs back in force, what kind of yield they will be getting. Whether or not that will pay of the cost of operating the flight is a big question.

Well, even though oil has recovered somewhat, the airlines are still getting bargain prices for fuel,
so that'll help as they try to ramp the schedules back up

janders wrote:

One thing to keep in mind is that barring a second COVID19 wave does not stunt things sooner, the summer travel period will be over in less than 3 months, so as demand climbs now, it should tapper off and then decline come late August anyhow.

ContnlEliteCMH wrote:

It's no wonder that leisure travel is leading the way. Prices are *low*. I just booked R/T between CMH and LAS, mid-July. I haven't paid so little to travel between the two cities in at least 15 years, and I'm sure that's a story many will tell in the next few weeks between many city pairs. I'm paying less than 5c/passenger mile, including bags.

Literally gambling with health to save a few dollars.

Doubt the majority of Americans anywhere close to making a similar decision.

I don’t think you’ll see a dip. The recovery will outweigh it. We are already beating Memorial Day holiday travel

janders wrote:

One thing to keep in mind is that barring a second COVID19 wave does not stunt things sooner, the summer travel period will be over in less than 3 months, so as demand climbs now, it should tapper off and then decline come late August anyhow.

I think that's partially built in already, since it is a yoy comparison, late August & September is already one of the lowest points of the year for the airlines.

The virus is hardly a dud. Millions have been sickened with 400,000+ deaths so far.

For Georgia specifically the effective reproduction rate - expressed as "R" value is up since things reopened. Any value over 1.0 means virus is spreading faster.



People being in close contact along with touching various surface risks spread of the virus. Air travel, and visiting locations like Disney or Vegas are prime venues to promote spread.

Unfortunately, I believe we will bump along for a long period with infections remaining stubbornly high which will only exacerbate pain in the airline industry and the broader economy. What might have been a 3-month hit if we could have fully complied with a national lockdown, become a far longer problem as too many ignore warnings and selfishly race off and put us back at square one.

LAXintl wrote:

The virus is hardly a dud. Millions have been sickened with 400,000+ deaths so far.

For Georgia specifically the effective reproduction rate - expressed as "R" value is up since things reopened. Any value over 1.0 means virus is spreading faster.



People being in close contact along with touching various surface risks spread of the virus. Air travel, and visiting locations like Disney or Vegas are prime venues to promote spread.

Unfortunately, I believe we will bump along for a long period with infections remaining stubbornly high which will only exacerbate pain in the airline industry and the broader economy. What might have been a 3-month hit if we could have fully complied with a national lockdown, become a far longer problem as too many ignore warnings and selfishly race off and put us back at square one.

If statewide R is 1.03, then R is significantly under 1 for those who can travel by air (i.e. those who don’t live in prisons or nursing homes). That’s hardly a difficult story for air travel as long as policy is rational and prospective travelers aren’t scared. The fear factor is the biggest problem for the industry.

I expect business travel to never fully recover to the amount before the COVID-19 outbreak. Leisure travel probably will recover completely by late Fall.
Anecdotal evidence perhaps but just had a 60 person Teams meeting with clients of us, which went very well. Management now wonders why we used to spend "so much money on air travel" if a "simple Teams meeting" can do the job?

R rate estimates are dart board throws at this point in the pandemic.

New booking data is out, leisure/online are really taking off, online was up 4.1% compared to the week prior. Corporate bookings only up 1% compared to previous week though....

here is another thing to watch out
https://skift.com/2020/06/08/alaska-air ... -recovery/
A lot of airlines have been talking up the possibility of cash neutral by end of the year. It's hard to see how this would work out if people are using travel credit rather than booking online.

I'm sure AS is not alone in having that much travel credit banked up.

Dieuwer wrote:

I expect business travel to never fully recover to the amount before the COVID-19 outbreak. Leisure travel probably will recover completely by late Fall.
Anecdotal evidence perhaps but just had a 60 person Teams meeting with clients of us, which went very well. Management now wonders why we used to spend "so much money on air travel" if a "simple Teams meeting" can do the job?

It’s going to come back. Business travel was mainly for schmoozing. People love to schmooze. Plus online sales are gonna lose to a salesman taking people out.

Dieuwer wrote:

I expect business travel to never fully recover to the amount before the COVID-19 outbreak. Leisure travel probably will recover completely by late Fall.
Anecdotal evidence perhaps but just had a 60 person Teams meeting with clients of us, which went very well. Management now wonders why we used to spend "so much money on air travel" if a "simple Teams meeting" can do the job?

I expect you are completely wrong. Business travel will return. Reminds me of this old United commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU2rpcAABbA

LAXintl wrote:

The virus is hardly a dud. Millions have been sickened with 400,000+ deaths so far.

For Georgia specifically the effective reproduction rate - expressed as "R" value is up since things reopened. Any value over 1.0 means virus is spreading faster.



People being in close contact along with touching various surface risks spread of the virus. Air travel, and visiting locations like Disney or Vegas are prime venues to promote spread.

Unfortunately, I believe we will bump along for a long period with infections remaining stubbornly high which will only exacerbate pain in the airline industry and the broader economy. What might have been a 3-month hit if we could have fully complied with a national lockdown, become a far longer problem as too many ignore warnings and selfishly race off and put us back at square one.

Where is that data for GA coming from? The official report from the State shows a slightly declining curve before and after reopening.

Probably won't end well imo.

Texas Reports Record-Breaking COVID-19 Hospitalizations, As State Reopens
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/texas-r ... early.html

The state now also now seeing its highest positive percentage rate of test - 7.55% vs 4.27% back in May.

UPlog wrote:

Probably won't end well imo.

Texas Reports Record-Breaking COVID-19 Hospitalizations, As State Reopens
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/texas-r ... early.html

The state now also now seeing its highest positive percentage rate of test - 7.55% vs 4.27% back in May.

The WHO now says that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic people is "very rare." So the real question us why are we sacrificing our economy, and the more than 20,000,000 people out of work, at all?


https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asympto ... ter%7Cmain

williaminsd wrote:

UPlog wrote:

Probably won't end well imo.

Texas Reports Record-Breaking COVID-19 Hospitalizations, As State Reopens
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/texas-r ... early.html

The state now also now seeing its highest positive percentage rate of test - 7.55% vs 4.27% back in May.

The WHO now says that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic people is "very rare." So the real question us why are we sacrificing our economy, and the more than 20,000,000 people out of work, at all?


https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asympto ... ter%7Cmain

The WHO also said wearing masks was pointless

LAXintl wrote:

The virus is hardly a dud.

Nonsensical BS. It's a dud, burning itself out, just like SARS did...

Okay, fine. Georgia's numbers not good enough for you?
How about Italy's? Non-essential business reopened in Lombardia April 14. Travel restrictions lifted on May 4.
No trend up in cases.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy
https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy/lombardia

KFTG wrote:

LAXintl wrote:

The virus is hardly a dud.

Nonsensical BS. It's a dud, burning itself out, just like SARS did...

Okay, fine. Georgia's numbers not good enough for you?
How about Italy's? Non-essential business reopened in Lombardia April 14. Travel restrictions lifted on May 4.
No trend up in cases.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy
https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy/lombardia

I think you are right. With proper precautions new infections can be kept to a minimum. The USA, however, has failed bigtime in ramping up the test/trace/isolate apparatus that would have made the situation so much safer. Why not? A question for a different forum!

In any case, it is time to get up on that horse and start riding again. In another thread I read that in China, domestic air passenger levels are up to 90% of the pre-Covid-19 numbers. Can anyone verify with sources? Can we expect the same in a few months time for Europe and the USA?

Texas reports two consecutive days of record coronavirus hospitalizations
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/09/texas-r ... ening.html

“We’re in a new phase. We’re feeling good. We’ve done great, but we have to stay smart, because reopening resets the whole game. When you reopen, when people start coming out, in some ways, you go right back to day one.”

Yes, unfortunately, complacency thinking we're out of the woods and rushing out to do non-essential things will risk going back to square one.

Travel and congregating in public is a transmission vector and we are starting to see the post lockdown results imo.

The numbers no longer make sense at all.
In both Europe and large parts of the US, people are no longer social distancing and not wearing face masks, but in Europe the trends are supposed to continue down while in the US the trends are supposed to continue up? Really?
Sorry, but this is just a load of BS. Can't have a both ways. My guess is that one dataset is severely manipulated for political gain. Not sure which one.

KFTG wrote:

LAXintl wrote:

The virus is hardly a dud.

Nonsensical BS. It's a dud, burning itself out, just like SARS did...

Okay, fine. Georgia's numbers not good enough for you?
How about Italy's? Non-essential business reopened in Lombardia April 14. Travel restrictions lifted on May 4.
No trend up in cases.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy
https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy/lombardia

I expect that most parts of the U.S. are working through a spike associated wtih Memorial Day weekend (now 15 days ago, so likely more or less past) and, more recently, protests. The Memorial Day weekend bump shouldn't have much effect on air travel demand. The protests might depending on how long they go on, but the effects of long-term protests on demand transcend the effects that those protests have on COVID-19 transmission.

If anyone is interested, the link below has a lot of data broken down by state.

https://projects.propublica.org/reopening-america/

If there's more testing there's going to be more reported infections. But becoming infection isn't some kind of death sentence or even cause to be ill for the "most part" unless you're at risk. Young healthy people die from the flu, they die from cancer, they die from heart issues. Very sad but a reality that sometimes the healthy and young drop dead. Can we take care of the at risk groups and move on with life?

KFTG wrote:

LAXintl wrote:

The virus is hardly a dud.

Nonsensical BS. It's a dud, burning itself out, just like SARS did...

Okay, fine. Georgia's numbers not good enough for you?
How about Italy's? Non-essential business reopened in Lombardia April 14. Travel restrictions lifted on May 4.
No trend up in cases.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy
https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy/lombardia

Texas would like a word.

Looks like they changed the format for the data

Midwestindy wrote:

Looks like they changed the format for the data

Very good to see 2 of AA's 3 most important hubs outperforming all other major markets in the country.

Super80DFW wrote:

Midwestindy wrote:

Looks like they changed the format for the data

Very good to see 2 of AA's 3 most important hubs outperforming all other major markets in the country.

Maybe not. There are two airports in Dallas, and the one I flew pout of yesterday (not DFW) was about twice as busy as it was for my flight two weeks ago.

Southwest maxed out on capacity for the flight. All aisle and window seats were filled.

bob75013 wrote:

Super80DFW wrote:

Midwestindy wrote:

Looks like they changed the format for the data

Very good to see 2 of AA's 3 most important hubs outperforming all other major markets in the country.

Maybe not. There are two airports in Dallas, and the one I flew pout of yesterday (not DFW) was about twice as busy as it was for my flight two weeks ago.

Southwest maxed out on capacity for the flight. All aisle and window seats were filled.

Nice individual example. The numbers don't lie, my statement is correct. My statement also doesn't contend that WN isn't doing well themselves in the Dallas market.

32andBelow wrote:

It’s going to come back. Business travel was mainly for schmoozing. People love to schmooze. Plus onlikne sales are gonna lose to a salesman taking people out.

No, just no.

I too strongly believe many Americans far underestimate this virus and are rushing out without caution for sake of a hardly necessary vacation. Time will tell how dangerous these impulses were.

spinotter wrote:

In any case, it is time to get up on that horse and start riding again. In another thread I read that in China, domestic air passenger levels are up to 90% of the pre-Covid-19 numbers. Can anyone verify with sources? Can we expect the same in a few months time for Europe and the USA?

Not even close.

China was down 52.6% in May.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSB9N2CG04Q?

janders wrote:

I too strongly believe many Americans far underestimate this virus and are rushing out without caution for sake of a hardly necessary vacation. Time will tell how dangerous these impulses were.

spinotter wrote:

In any case, it is time to get up on that horse and start riding again. In another thread I read that in China, domestic air passenger levels are up to 90% of the pre-Covid-19 numbers. Can anyone verify with sources? Can we expect the same in a few months time for Europe and the USA?

Not even close.

China was down 52.6% in May.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSB9N2CG04Q?

That doesn’t say domestic. Everyone knows international is shot for a minute. Demos tif is coming back much quicker.

janders wrote:

I too strongly believe many Americans far underestimate this virus and are rushing out without caution for sake of a hardly necessary vacation. Time will tell how dangerous these impulses were.

spinotter wrote:

In any case, it is time to get up on that horse and start riding again. In another thread I read that in China, domestic air passenger levels are up to 90% of the pre-Covid-19 numbers. Can anyone verify with sources? Can we expect the same in a few months time for Europe and the USA?

Not even close.

China was down 52.6% in May.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSB9N2CG04Q?

Thanks for the true numbers. Still, almost half of pre-pandemic numbers, with very little international travel, I suppose. Will the USA be up to 50% in a month or two?

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel ... nute-trips

"More than 70 percent of people who booked a flight in May were looking to travel in May or June," according to Priceline

“Overall, we’re seeing the majority of travel demand happening in the same month or same week of when the trip is set to begin,” Mel Dohmen, a senior spokeswoman at Travelocity

"Compared to other states, those living in the Northeast — like New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine — were more likely to book trips two to three months out"

"Conversely, travelers from the South and Southeast along with those in many Midwestern states like Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Minnesota were more likely to book a week or less from when they want to travel."

I'lll start by saying its early in the booking curve, but Florida bookings are tracking the same as last July





https://twitter.com/xJonNYC/status/1272 ... 44194?s=20

Data thru May 31st:

Two anecdotal stories for y’all. My company has operations in two states, and we have a team scattered about the country. I’m in Arizona and I have coworkers in a handful of other states.

All air travel is restricted. We are slowly opening that up for intra-company travel (ie someone from site A goes to site B and VV). No sales travel by air. No entertainment requiring air travel. No trade shows—they were all canceled anyway including a few 50-60k person events. Air travel for us will come back, but it’s going to be driven by things we can’t control: the virus, individual’s comfort levels etc. There is nothing that replaces in person conversations and visits. Teams and Zoom are fabulous, but in person visits are a must in our industry. Our suppliers are telling us similar things. No air travel, no overnight hotel stays, no taking people out for lunch etc.

The other anecdotal story: I took my wife to Los Angeles over the weekend. We normally fly to SoCal 10-12 times a year with her on my WN companion pass. We drove this time. During a 20 minute drive on the 105 freeway on a Thursday night, we saw exactly one plane land. Two were in the pattern when we drove by LAX at 830p on a Friday night. The airport was absolutely deserted. It took two minutes to drive the upper roadway and four to do the lower roadway. It’s like something out of Mad Max. I know there are people flying, but they sure as heck aren’t at LAX on a Friday.

LA county only recently re-opened (June 12).

Late evening departures seem like toast. MIA is a ghost town after 8PM. I agree it’s going to take several more months for business travel to recover. Also the suits & bean counters are going to be shoving virtual down our throats for a while. Until it proves to be the disaster it will become.

Miamiairport wrote:

Late evening departures seem like toast. MIA is a ghost town after 8PM. I agree it’s going to take several more months for business travel to recover. Also the suits & bean counters are going to be shoving virtual down our throats for a while. Until it proves to be the disaster it will become.

A couple of months? The liability of making employees risk getting sick is too great for companies to allow anything other than the most essential of business travel. Especially if it requires gatherings of people. As long as we're officially in a Pandemic no insurance will cover that.
It should go without saying that airlines have better figure out how to make money without the passengers at the front of the plane, for quite some time.