Air Travel Data | Summer 2022 ✈️
What does the air travel data summer 2022 suggest?
While summer officially began merely 17 days ago, summer travel kicked off nearly a month before. After six weeks into the heavy travel season, interesting data is telling us a lot about how the lingering pandemic and inflation are effecting travel. Moreover, travel is a key predictor in economic growth or slowdown. We compiled TSA air travel data since the start of Memorial Day weekend to today and charted it year-over-year to give you a visual representation of how summer travel is going so far this year.
What does the data say?
- 15.2-million more people traveled during the 6-weeks ending 7/8/2022 than the same period in 2021. 19%
- An average of 354k people traveled per day, year-over-year.
- 11.8-million less people traveled during the same period in 2019. 11%
- The first week of July has lower growth year-over-year (12%) than the previous five-weeks (20%)
More Data
Domestic leisure travel spending for the year has already surpassed pre-pandemic levels, even when adjusted for inflation—though it is projected to remain $46 billion below where it should have been in 2022 if not for the pandemic.
Domestic business travel is finally picking up and volume is expected to reach 81% of pre-pandemic levels in 2022 and 96% in 2023. Nevertheless, spending, when adjusted for inflation, will not fully recover to pre-pandemic levels within the range of the forecast.
International inbound travel is making a big comeback, aided by the recent drop of pre-departure testing. It is projected to grow rapidly through the rest of 2022, and then grow at a slower pace in 2023-2026. A full recovery to pre-pandemic levels (volume and spending) is not expected until 2025.
