TSA Checkpoint

TSA checkpoint traffic is nearing a point where it breaks 600k travelers in a day. It averaged 495k travelers last week. While the TSA has announced that they will be rolling out changes to their operation sometime mid-June, there has yet to be an official announcement about the changes.

FAA Reports

The FAA flight stats for month of may have been released, and as of the month of May, flights aren’t seeing any signs of recovery. The month of April was where the sharp decline in flights ended, with an average of only 680 flights per day out of Atlanta. For reference, April of last year averaged 2,522 flights daily. May showed no improvements with an average of only 607 flights out of Atlanta daily (once again the one year ago average was just above 2500).

In my previous posts, I speculated that the airlines would follow a recovery trend similar to that of restaurants, and that we would see the beginnings of a recovery throughout the month of May, but now that the numbers are out, this simply isn’t the case. It’s important to note that though flights have bottomed out, TSA checkpoint throughput during the month of May was beginning to increase. It seems that more people are flying, but Airlines are being more efficient in how they fill seats in their planes.

Delta

Stock price has remained relatively stable over the past week, closing this Friday at $29.51, after opening last Monday at $28.30. Delta has announced that they plan on retiring their Boeing 777s by the end of the year. This comes right after retiring two other planes, the MD-88 and MD-90 in early June. This move falls right in line with Delta’s strategy of downsizing to reduce costs during the pandemic.

In the News

500 Delta employees test positive for COVID-19

WVLT-8

Five hundred employees with Delta Air Lines reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, and 10 of them died due to the virus, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

AJC reported Delta plans to test all of its employees for the virus starting this week in Minneapolis, expanding to Atlanta, Detroit and New York.

Delta to retire its Boeing 777s even earlier than expected

Benji Stawski @ The Points Guy

The Atlanta-based carrier announced in mid-May that it would retire its relatively young fleet of 18 777-200s by year-end, citing concerns over a long and slow recovery in international travel after the crisis. While the airline still hasn’t announce a specific date, the retirement will come sooner that expected.