by Donald Wood
Last updated: 9:10 AM ET, Wed January 10, 2024
As airlines in the United States turn their focus to dealing
with winter storms, several major carriers serving America’s most popular
cities have unveiled details of the wildly successful winter holiday travel
period.
American Airlines announced it welcomed nearly 7.8 million
customers across more than 71,000 flights between December 20 and January 8,
and canceled the fewest number of flights. The carrier didn’t cancel a single
mainline flight for the first six days of the period and only 16 were canceled
overall.
American’s on-time departure and arrival performance both
improved by around 15 percent compared to 2022’s holiday period. The key metric
measuring mishandled baggage improved 66 percent compared to last year’s
holiday period.
At Delta Air Lines, the company served an estimated nine
million passengers between December 21 and January 7, marking 15 days during
the period with zero cancellations across mainline and connection flights.
Southwest Airlines revealed that nearly 81,500 flights were
operated between December 20 and January 7, with fewer than one percent of
scheduled flights during the 19-day extended holiday travel period being
canceled. With more than 4,000 daily flights across the same period, Southwest
moved more than 9.7 million passengers.
As for travelers flying on a budget, Frontier Airlines
boasted a record-setting 99-plus percent completion factor for both the month of
December and the busy holiday period. In addition, the carrier’s on-time
arrival and on-time departure levels for December 2023 were its highest since
2015.
As for the Transportation Security Administration, the
government agency reported that at least two million passengers passed through security
checkpoints each day of the winter
holiday travel period, except Christmas Eve, which boasted 1.97 million
travelers screened.
The high mark came on December 22, when 2,775,193 passengers
were processed.
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