ARLINGTON, Va. — CBS travel editor Peter Greenberg says it might be 2023 before we see travel return to its pre-pandemic glory, but there will be an increase in the next few week.
Others -- including travel experts, major airlines and the TSA -- say they don’t think they’ll see pre-pandemic levels of travel this spring. But are excited to here there will be an increase.
"You're going to see a measurable increase in the number of people traveling and the number of destinations they're going to," said Greenberg.
While people have been flocking to Florida recently, Greenberg says west coast destinations like Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado will see the biggest increase in the next three months.
"Open space areas where people are going to feel easier about where they're going to go," said Greenberg.
Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, agrees. She says the TSA is hiring 6,000 officers nationwide to address the need.
"Here in this area we're looking to hire about 100 officers at Reagan National and Dulles International Airport, and then 50 at BWI," she said.
So how much is travel expected to increase this spring?
From DCA, American Airlines is planning to operate an average of 132 daily departures in April. That’s nearly twice as many as March, but still about half of the daily departures Americans saw in April 2019 before the pandemic.
United is seeing a similar pattern. They say domestic capacity for April 2021 will be 54% compared to April 2019. For international travel, they say capacity for April 2021 will be 42% compared to the same time in 2019.
But Greenberg says it won't be the big 3 that will reap the most from this spike in travel. Instead, he says Spirit, Allegiant, Frontier, Southwest and Sun Country will be where travelers turn.
"They're gonna be the ones that open up and flood the zone with lots of new flights, lots of new destinations, and the fares are going to be reasonable," he said.
But even though people are feeling the itch to get away, the CDC is still advising people to avoid both domestic and international travel -- even if you're vaccinated.
"Every time that there's a surge in travel we have a surge in cases in this country," said CDC director Rochelle Wolensky. "We know that many of our variants have emerged from international places and we know that the travel corridor is a place where people are mixing a lot"
The CDC says they’re hopeful their next set of guidance will have more science around what vaccinated people can do with travel possibly being among them.