Record US Air Travel 0:33
New York (CNN Business) -
Spring break is here, and people living in isolation for a year from the pandemic are throwing precautions away.
Saturday was the 10th day in a row that more than 1 million passengers traveled through American airports.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported 1,369,180 travelers passed through security checkpoints on Saturday, a day after air passengers set a new record during the pandemic, when 1,468,516 passed through TSA security.
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That's a worrying sign for health experts: Although millions of Americans have been vaccinated, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to recommend that people avoid travel.
So far they have not issued a new travel guide for vaccinated Americans due to concerns caused by surges related to travel recorded in the United States during previous vacation periods.
"What we've seen is that we have waves after people start traveling, we saw it after July 4, we saw it after Labor Day, we saw it after the Christmas break," the director said last week. from the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, responding to a question from CNN's Kaitlan Collins during a covid-19 briefing.
Walensky said that because 90% of people remain unvaccinated, the CDC will wait to update the guide.
A dangerous milestone
Despite warnings from the CDC, the US airline industry reached a dangerous milestone last week: For the first time since the pandemic began, air travel has increased from the previous year.
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That is a positive sign for airlines, but it is also a difficult hurdle to overcome.
The increase remains at a very low level - about half of pre-pandemic air traffic in 2019.
However, the airline industry is looking for signs of a moderate demand for air travel.
At the end of the December vacation period, the TSA logged over a million travelers for 5 days in a row.
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In another hopeful sign, airlines are reporting better bookings for this summer, and American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker said Monday that the company "is getting very close to 2019 in terms of total bookings."
All airlines are expected to report losses once again in the first quarter of 2021, following a combined loss of $ 32 billion in 2020, excluding special items.
But investors are getting more optimistic: Shares of Southwest, Alaska Air, JetBlue and Hawaiian Airlines are already above pre-pandemic levels, while American, Delta and Spirit are close to that benchmark.
Only United's shares are down significantly from where they were at the end of January 2020.
CNN's Chris Isidore, Pete Muntean, and Gregory Wallace contributed to this report.
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