It鈥檚 crunch time for the peak holiday travel period for American Airlines and United Airlines.
The massive effort to get travelers to their Christmas and New Year鈥檚 destinations makes for especially busy days at Greater Washington鈥檚 airports as traffic nears pre-pandemic levels for the region’s two dominant airlines.
Locally, United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL) has seen an average of 20,000 customers each day land and depart from its hub at Dulles International Airport during this peak period, said Eddie Gordon, the airline鈥檚 managing director Dulles. The airline has 234 daily flights departing from Dulles during this period 鈥� more than double what it was flying at this time last year, prior to the widespread availability of Covid vaccines, and roughly 90% of the number of customers traveling during the same period in 2019.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a busy time,鈥� Gordon said in an interview with the Washington Business Journal. 鈥淥ne of the different things about today鈥檚 travel is people are鈥�
