11 October: US & Canada COVID-19 Aviation Traffic Report

Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2020 by Nick Benson
Topics: COVID-19

In a nutshell: last week US passenger airlines carried 34% of pre-crisis passenger volume on 53% of the flights utilizing 75% of their fleet.

Some good news in the stats over the last three weeks since the last post; TSA screening numbers have continued growing, and virtually all of the mainline passenger carriers operated more flights in the most recent week than the two previous - modest growth, to be sure, but growth nonetheless.

Departures by Airline

Southwest appears to have added a bunch of flights on Friday and Saturday, enough to cause the entire bump in their weekly stats below. Unsure if this is responding to the holiday weekend, or if it's a longer-term adjustment.

Fleet Evolution by Airline

A few apparent fleet changes that have happened in the last 3-4 weeks:

  • Delta added 10 A321s and 8 757-200s
  • American removed 20 737-800s
  • United added 15 737-900ERs
  • Spirit removed its A319s entirely (had ~30 flying weekly pre-pandemic)

Nick Benson

Nick lives in Burnsville, Minnesota with his wife and three children. He grooves on railroad and aviation photography, politics, geography, weather, and LEGO. He started JetTip's smart flight alert service in 2017, and is now a full-time avgeek. He can frequently be found atop a step ladder at MSP's Aircraft Viewing Area.