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Travelers pass by a Christmas Tree at Miami International Airport, Nov. 24, 2015, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

More people than ever before will fly on U.S. airlines this holiday season – nearly 46 million of them – according to a new projection from the industry’s Washington trade group.

If that sounds like a broken record – repeating over and over – there’s a reason for it: it is. In each of the last five years, counting 2018, the industry topped the previous year’s record number of travelers in all of the major holiday travel periods, from Presidents’ Day weekend through the Christmas/New Year’s season.

U.S. carriers are expected to carry close to 1 billion passengers by the time 2018 comes to a close in a couple of weeks.  That’s up 3.5% from last year’s total of 965 million total passengers; up 6.8% from 2016’s 932 million; up 10.3% from 2015’s total; and up 14.8% from just four years ago – 2014, when “just” 854 million people flew on U.S. carriers.  But more directly; the total annual passenger count for U.S. airlines has risen by almost 150 million passengers in just five years.

This year during the 20-day holiday season that begins Thursday, December 20 and runs through Sunday, January 6, the trade group, Airlines For America, or A4A, projects that 45.7 million people will board commercial flights. That would be a 5.2% jump from the 43.5 million who flew on U.S. carriers during the corresponding travel period last year.

That averages out to an expected 2.54 million passengers per day for each day during the 20-day holiday period. That would be equal to carrying 126,000 more passengers per day, industry-wide, during the holiday travel season this year.

Courtesy of Airlines for America

Of course, passenger travel won’t be distributed that evenly across all 20 days. The biggest travel day of the period is forecast to be Friday, December 21, when about 2.9 million people are expected to board U.S. airliners, followed closely by Thursday, December 20, and Wednesday, Dec. 26.  The lightest days for passenger travel on U.S. carriers this holiday season (as usual) will be Christmas Eve and Christmas Day plus the last Saturday of the travel period (January 5). But even on those days passenger loads are expected to be relatively high compared with the proverbial “average day” passenger loads.

During last year’s holiday travel period the industry’s load factor – or percentage of filled seats – exceeded 90% much of the time and approached 95% on peak days.  To handle the expected increased demand this year during the year-end holiday season, U.S. airlines will be offering about 143,000 additional available seats daily over what they were offering last year.

One obvious reason why travel demand this holiday season is expected to be a record-breaker is the same reason that holiday travel demand has been rising steadily in all recent years: low fare prices.

With less than a month left in 2018 it now is almost certain that the average inflation-adjusted domestic round-trip air fare in America this year will be the lowest it has been in at least nine years. Based on data and analysis from the U.S. Department of Transportation and A4A the average domestic round-trip fare paid during the first half of 2018 was $338, excluding ancillary fees, and $360 including those fees. That’s 15.1% lower than the $398 that travelers paid, on average, in 2014 excluding ancillary fees, and 14.9% lower than the $423 they paid, on average in that same year when fees for ancillary services are included.

John Heimlich, A4A’s Chief Economist, says that “With airfares at historic lows, travelers are choosing to fly on U.S. airlines in record numbers, especially during the busy holiday season. Increased consumer choices and fares that match nearly every budget have enabled a record number of people take to the skies to visit loved ones, conduct business or enjoy a holiday getaway.”

Another huge reason feeding this year’s booming holiday air travel demand is the falling price of fuel. Though oil and refined fuel prices were at times uncomfortably high for Americans during the first nine months of this year, those prices have dropped significantly in the final quarter. That price drop hasn’t had enough time to have a significant lowering effect on airlines’ day-to-day operating costs, or their fares, at least not yet. But lower gasoline prices at the pump have already had an impact on consumers’ pockets, which are a little more full because of the savings each time they’ve filled up since September and because of slightly lower prices paid for products delivered to stores and homes by truck and/or rail.

Meanwhile, Wall Street’s somewhat concerning tumble in recent weeks seems to be having no perceptible effect on U.S. consumers’ desire to fly this holiday season. In part that’s likely because most holiday travel plans were made, and a huge percentage of holiday tickets sold before the stock market turned sharply down over the past few weeks. Additionally, while a number of stocks have lost a lot of value in trading recently, many individual investors likely have not lost that much. Rather many of them simply have moved money out of stocks and into bonds, cash or other investments they believe to be more stable and safe at the moment.

This likely record-breaking year-end holiday season comes on the heels of another record-breaking holiday travel season just a couple of weeks ago during the week of Thanksgiving. Final numbers from that holiday period aren’t yet available. But going in to the 12-day Thanksgiving travel period expectations were that 30.6 million people would board U.S. airlines’ flights, up from 29 million during the same period in 2017.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving this year was a record day for U.S. air travel, according to newly released government data.

The Transportation Security Administration announced Tuesday that it processed 2,729,770 passengers and crew on Nov. 25, beating the previous record set on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2004, when 2.71 million people went through TSA security to board flights. Last year, 2.61 million people flew on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

On a typical day, 2.1 million passengers pass through government security before they board a flight. Officers saw more than 600,000 more travelers than normal on Sunday.

“It was all hands on deck during the Thanksgiving holiday week. Close coordination with airline and airport partners, new technology, enhanced screening and more travelers enrolled in TSA Pre✓, TSA used every tool to secure air travel for the millions of passengers traveling to their holiday destinations,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement. “I thank our entire TSA team and industry partners for their work and attention to detail during a very hectic time, ensuring safe and secure travel for all passengers.”

The 17-year-old agency warned in early November it expected to set a new record for the total number of airline travelers in the days leading up to and after Thanksgiving.

In addition to the Sunday record, TSA also set a record for the number of passengers who flew during the holiday travel period — 25,652,287 in total — from Friday, Nov. 16, through Monday, Nov. 26. That number was up 6 percent from 2017, which was also a record holiday travel period.

Pekoske had vowed in early November to keep lines short but not at the price of administering subpar security. Data from the 11-day heavy travel period showed 95 percent of all travelers waited less than 20 minutes in a security checkpoint line and 99 percent of TSA PreCheck enrollees waited less than 10 minutes.

He also credited the booming economy for the uptick in business at airports nationwide.

“The good news is the U.S. economy is growing very strongly. Passenger air travel is growing very strongly along with it,” Pekoske said at a press conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this month.

TSA plans to deploy an additional 80 canine officers and 1,200 TSA officers across the country’s 440 federalized airports. The agency is comprised of 43,000 officers.

More than 17 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Pekoske warned that threats to the aviation industry have not lessened.

“The threats to aviation security are persistent. They are no less than they were in the 2002, 2003 time frame,” he said. “Please don’t assume that because you don’t hear about aviation threats in the media all the time like you might have immediately following 9/11. Those threats are very much still there.”

TSA screened 771.5 million passengers in 2017 — 30 million more people than in 2016.

Asia is set for a boom in air travel, according to a range of forecasts, but the eye-popping predictions have also brought concerns about congested airports, a lack of pilots and flight safety.

The rise of Asia’s aviation sector – described as “unprecedented long-term growth” by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – is being driven by middle class travellers from China and India, the emergence of new players like Indonesia and Vietnam, and intense competition among low-cost carriers. Technological and entrepreneurial innovations have also played a role, as has the region’s overall economic good health.

Even so, the industry as a whole has been left scrambling to catch up to increasing demand – a complex, urgent and expensive process that has been made even more difficult by the Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people in October.

Lion Air, furious at Boeing over crash blame, may cancel billions in orders

“The aviation boom in Asia is a game changer,” said Conrad Clifford, the IATA’s regional vice-president for Asia-Pacific. “We are forecasting that Asia-Pacific will see an extra 2.35 billion annual passengers by 2037, for a total market size of 3.9 billion passengers. This growth is a huge opportunity for the region’s economies and aviation but also a challenge in terms of infrastructure, human capital, regulation and investment.”

Airports Council International (ACI) predicts that by 2040 China will become the largest passenger market with just under 4 billion passengers, or about 20 per cent of all global traffic, while India will have 1.3 billion. The Asia-Pacific region, over the same time, is expected to contribute more than 42 per cent of all international air travellers.

The most rapidly expanding countries in the world for air passengers, according to the ACI estimates, will be India and Vietnam, with China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines also in the top 10. Of the 10 airports that grew the fastest from 2007 to 2017, nine were in Asia, including Bangkok, Surabaya, Indonesia, and Zhengzhou, China. (The only non-Asian city was Istanbul.)

By 2030, it is estimated that air travel in Asia will be bigger than the next two markets – North America and Europe – combined. Travel isn’t the only factor: an IATA study found that by 2035, air transport was expected to support more than 70 million jobs and nearly US$1.3 trillion in gross domestic product – compared to more than 33 million jobs and upwards of US$700 billion in GDP in 2014.

“The way that aviation goes hand-in hand with economic and social development is well understood,” said Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines. “In Asia, that applies to large and small countries and nations in different states of development. There’s a commitment to growth here.”

India’s aviation regulator wants pilots to train in a simulator that replicates Lion Air crash

Aviation experts said the industry must overcome various challenges to capitalise on the boom. As Goh Choon Phong, the chief executive of Singapore Airlines, wrote in the 2018 IATA annual review: “Clearly, the key constraint is infrastructure.”

Infrastructure in this context mostly refers to airports, planes and the people needed to fix and fly them. The shortages, many insiders said, are acute.

“The industry in Asia is going to need literally hundreds of thousands of aviation workers over the next 20 years: pilots, flight attendants and, just as important, is what we call the MROs, the technicians in charge of maintenance, repair and overhaul,” said Matt Driskill, the editor of Asian Aviation magazine.

Driskill is hardly exaggerating: Boeing, the US aerospace giant, estimated that by 2037 the Asia-Pacific region would need 240,000 new pilots, more than half of those in China. The company’s 2018 Boeing Pilot and Technician Outlook, meanwhile, said the region would need nearly 320,000 cabin crew over the same period.

“These are the men and women who keep the plane safe, and this is one of the big concerns that people have. One of the problems is that there aren’t enough training facilities for pilots and ground crew. A whole generation is retiring, so another problem is how to get young people interested in the industry. For the MRO techs, I call it code monkeys versus grease monkeys. Everything today is run by algorithms, and young people are asking, ‘Why would I want to be an air plane mechanic?’”

The shortage of aviation workers comes at a problematic time: thousands of new planes are already on order by regional airlines. Boeing has projected that 40 per cent of its new passenger planes will be delivered to Asia, and experts estimate the same to be true for Airbus, the European aerospace conglomerate. Most of these orders, according to Driskill, will be “single-aisle planes” like the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320.

“The global order book is heavily tilted to Asia, but where do these planes park and where do they fly?” said Brendan Sobie, the chief analyst for think tank the CAPA Centre for Aviation. “The airlines might be able to fill them up with passengers, but is there enough space in the airports and in the air to accommodate them?”

Most Asian airports, including those in Jakarta, Manila and Beijing, are operating at – or over – their original capacity, according to Sobie and other experts. Hundreds of new facilities, meanwhile, are in development or stuck in the slow, thorny process that inevitably requires some level of government approval and large amounts of capital. CAPA has estimated that some 230 new airports are being built in the Asia-Pacific region, more than half the world’s total.

“Virtually every Asian country needs airport infrastructure,” Sobie said. “Some need it more urgently and some need it in other places, like secondary cities. But the main capital cities have a situation where there is not enough growth to meet the increased demand. Bangkok’s two airports are at capacity, so they’re focusing on a third airport, and Hong Kong is a good example: growth has been slow there because there is no more space.”

Lion Air crash was so intense it tore black box apart

The pace of growth, according to Clifford, the IATA regional vice-president, has forced the industry into a race against time.

“Aircraft have been ordered but airports need to have enough slots, runways and gates to handle them,” he said. “Air traffic control needs to be enhanced to handle these flights efficiently and safely, and airport terminals need to be expanded to provide a safe, secure, efficient and pleasant experience to all these additional passengers. But there is just not enough time, space and money to triple the airport building infrastructure for this growth.”

COMPETITION, SAFETY

For an industry facing many challenges, the Lion Air disaster could not have come at a worse time. Analysts have been left to determine whether the fatal crash was a blip in an otherwise much improved safety record, or a symptom of breakneck growth and intense competition.

“One problem is that everybody and their dog wants to be the next Tony Fernandes and be the next AirAsia and make millions of dollars,” said Driskill of Asian Aviation, referring to the chief executive of Malaysia-based AirAsia, Southeast Asia’s largest low-cost carrier.

“There is this intense pressure to grow, grow, grow and, combined with a lack of skilled pilots and MRO techs, these things have led to safety problems as we have seen with Lion Air and some of the Indian carriers.”

“If you look at the profit margins, most airlines are running on about US$10 profit per passenger per flight. I heard one executive say that is basically a hamburger and a Coke away from making a loss. So when you have such thin profit margins, and the only way to make money is to keep planes in the air, there is a real incentive to fly that thing 24/7,” Driskill said.

Tom Ballantyne, the chief correspondent for Orient Aviation magazine, has covered the industry in Asia for 25 years. He urges caution when considering the recent disaster.

“The Lion Air crash reflects poorly on the industry. For many people, it’s another crash in Indonesia. But you have to recognise that it’s a single incident and the Asia-Pacific region, in fact, has an incredible safety record. In 2017, there were no accidents, and there have been real improvements: China, which once had a poor safety record, now has one of the best safety records in the world.”

Still, safety concerns from the public remain another major headache for an industry facing plenty of challenges. The Lion Air accident has intensified scrutiny of Indonesia’s aviation safety practices, and the government has called for increased oversight of the nation’s airlines.

Despite this, as Ballantyne points out, the staggering growth appears set to continue.

“It’s happening: and the number one concern in Asia is whether the infrastructure can keep up with the growing demand. At the moment it certainly is not,” he said. “Every time I write stories about the region and China or India, you almost can’t believe the numbers. But the forecasts are real, and they’re not even forecasts any more, the growth is already here.”

Alvin Lie, a former Indonesian lawmaker and aviation expert who now consults for the country’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), said the Lion Air crash had sent a clear warning to the government. He said the DGCA was already taking a look at pilots’ hours and working to digitise logbooks.

“If there is any fault in the Lion Air tragedy, the blame is on Boeing for the plane’s technical problems,” Lie said. “But another issue that deserves attention is the airlines, such as Lion Air. The number of planes they operate and the number of routes they serve – it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes they operate below the minimum number for crew.”

Lie was adamant, however, about the negligible effect he believes the Lion Air disaster will have on Indonesia’s aviation sector, which he praised as “one of the fastest growing in the world”.

“If you look at the safety record of Indonesia it has improved tremendously. In fact, in 2017 there wasn’t a single accident or fatality. The Lion Air accident doesn’t reflect on Indonesia’s air safety.” ■

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A lingering storm kept dumping immobilizing snow, sleet or freezing rain across five southern states, leaving dangerously icy roads and hundreds of thousands of people without electricity. Authorities urged people to stay home Monday in areas where driving was dangerous.

A winter storm in the southeastern United States was impacting travel Sunday, causing the cancelation of more than 1,000 flights, including some to and from San Diego.

American Airlines canceled 225 flights on Saturday and 1,100 flights on Sunday — most of them in and out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport, where the airline has a major hub. Another 300 cancellations were expected for Monday.

The airline canceled two direct flights from Charlotte Douglas to San Diego International Airport and one direct flight from San Diego to Charlotte on Sunday, as well as multiple others with layovers, according to the American Airlines website.

“If you are traveling to an area that’s affected by bad weather, check the status of your flight,” San Diego International Airport spokeswoman Rebecca Bloomfield advised travelers. “Even if you aren’t, the flight may be coming from an affected area.”

American Airlines also issued a travel alert for nine airports throughout the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia, meaning passengers may be able to change travel plans without a fee.

Travelers were advised to check their flight status before heading to the airport. Cancellations were reported on flights from as far as the Midwest.

Accidents on snow-covered interstates caused major delays Sunday, hundreds of flights were canceled and drivers in North Carolina and Virginia got stuck in snow or lost control on icy patches. But the commuters’ nightmare provided pre-winter thrills for kids and the young at heart, who were able to go sledding and build snowmen in places that don’t often see so much of the white stuff.

The National Weather Service said a “prolonged period of snow” began late Saturday and would last until Monday in the region, with the heaviest snow in northwest North Carolina and southern Virginia. Some areas of North Carolina and Virginia saw more than a foot (30 centimeters) of snow by Sunday afternoon.

More than 300,000 power outages were reported across the region, with North Carolina bearing the brunt of it, and nearly 270,000 remained without power Monday morning, according to poweroutage.us. South Carolina and Virginia, along with parts of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, also saw outages.

Police in North Carolina and Virginia said they’d responded to hundreds of snow-related traffic accidents as of Sunday afternoon, as cars, trucks and tractor-trailers all struggled with the snow and ice.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper strongly urged residents to stay off the roads, asking drivers not to put lives of first responders needlessly at risk. Cooper said emergency crews, including the National Guard, worked overnight to clear traffic accidents on major roadways.

“Stay put if you can,” Cooper said Sunday. “Wrap a few presents, decorate the tree, watch some football.”

Five members of a dive team searched the Neuse River in Kinston, North Carolina, for a missing driver Sunday after a tractor-trailer ran off a road and into the river, WRAL-TV reported . Police just outside of Charlotte said a driver died when a tree fell on a moving vehicle.

Some found that walking was a more reliable means of transportation as the roads were blanketed with a wintry mix. On Sunday, Tervante Wilkerson trudged through blowing snow up Old NC 98 in Wake Forest, North Carolina, to walk across town to see his two young children.

Still, he made light of the situation, saying: “It’s definitely a Kodak moment in Wake Forest.”

In Greensboro, a few restaurants were open Sunday night for NFL games despite as much as one foot (.3 meters) of snow falling on the city, according to the News Record.

“We’ve got some nice homemade chicken soup, some tacos and we’ve got beer,” Greg Munning, owner of Taqueria el Azteca, told the newspaper. “We’re just hanging out and chilling and watching the Panthers game.”

The Roanoke, Virginia, area saw 10 or more inches (25 cm) of snow. And it came down so fast that some people couldn’t keep up with their snow shovels, such as Adam Thompson, who was working on the walkway to his house.

“That’s funny,” he told The Roanoke Times. “I just shoveled that part and it’s already covered in snow again.”

Governors and local officials in several states declared emergencies ahead of the storm crossing several Southern states, which hit portions of North Carolina and Virginia particularly hard.

Virginia State Police said Interstate 81 in far southwest Virginia was particularly dangerous, with snow coming down faster Sunday afternoon than crews could clear it. Police said several tractor-trailers slid off the highway.

Officials warned residents to prepare emergency kits and stay off roads in impacted areas. Several schools districts in North Carolina and Virginia announced they’ll be closed Monday.

“Virginians should take all necessary precautions to ensure they are prepared for winter weather storm impacts,” said Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.

Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the sixth busiest airport in the country, said American Airlines reduced its operations, with more than 1,000 flights canceled on Sunday.