Tentative Comeback for US Airports

October 22, 2020 By Florencia Panizza Tags: Travel, COVID-19

In our recent webinar, we spent some time looking into foot traffic trends at airports in America and Europe.

Location data is a very reliable proxy for airline passengers, since there are few reasons to be at an airport other than to board a plane. Precise mapping can filter out people who have come to collect or drop off passengers from those who have passed security in order to catch a flight.

We compared our foot traffic data for the major US hubs with the number of passengers reported as screened by the TSA and found a correlation of 0.9.

It’s no surprise that air travel is significantly down due to the pandemic. But our data does offer a glimmer of hope for airlines. While foot traffic to the major US hubs remains down 75% year-over-year so far in October, this represents an increase in travelers of 350% since the nadir in April.

Foot Traffic at US Hub Airports

By comparison, we also reviewed traffic at European airports. Overall, European air travel saw more of a pick-up during the summer months than the large US airports. This makes some sense. With inter-continental travel restrictions eased, many Europeans took advantage and went on vacation in July and August.

Athens airport in Greece briefly saw it’s traffic return to pre-pandemic levels, although it has dropped again since September. Barcelona airport, by contrast, barely saw an uptick in passengers before a resurgence of cases in Spain meant restrictions were reimposed.

Foot Traffic at EU Airports

For more information on travel trends, or to learn about how we calculate correlations please contact info@advan.us

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About Advan

Advan is the leader in the financial and real estate industries, enabling participants to analyze foot traffic data across multiple sectors, including retail, hospitality, consumer services, energy, technology, healthcare, REITS, financials and others. Advan derives its datasets using multi parameter models that analyze cellphone location data crossed with curated geofenced areas.

Top tier institutional investors spanning from quantitative hedge funds to fundamental asset managers have been the main consumers of Advan’s products.