As the world makes progress against the COVID-19 bug, people are getting the travel bug. The New York Times is reporting that last Friday was the busiest in U.S. airports in more than a year with 1.357 million people passing through security. For perspective, however, that’s just 62 percent of the total padding in sock feet through the security assembly line on the same day in 2019, which was a Tuesday and not the Friday before spring break. Perhaps not surprisingly, traditional spring break destinations, like Florida and Texas, which have also relaxed COVID-19-related restrictions, are among the top destinations.
The travel surge has lots of people in high places worried about the effect on the pandemic and the TSA is prominent among them. The agency said it anticipated the spring rush and stepped up recruitment to replace agents who contracted the virus while getting as many vaccinated as possible. More than 6,000 TSA employees have tested positive for the virus.
American Airlines is “happily” canceling over 10,000 furloughs as Congress’ new COVID-19 relief bill heads to President Biden’s desk.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and President Robert Isom told employees on Wednesday that after Congress passed the new $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that includes more funding for the Payroll Support Program, it will be canceling 13,000 furloughs.
“For our 13,000 colleagues who received Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices last month, those are happily canceled – you can tear them up!” the company said.
“Travel stocks have been making a comeback, too. Airlines stocks, for instance, jumped 8% last week, with American Airlines climbing 14%. All are rising again on Monday”, per Barron’s.
Both snippets of news from business pages in the past six days.
By all means send more money to the airlines as their stock gets inflated with taxpayers relief.
Some of the highest paid work groups “ie” pilots have had the benefit of an extended vacation this past year…paid for by the taxpayer. You know what they say, “The trend is your friend”. I wonder if this is the future?
Last sentence of the first paragraph says it all! It’s time those “people in high places” start paying attention to where those travelers are going before more of them end up like the idiot governor of California, fighting for their own political lives.