Fewer people are flying, but airlines aren’t worried

Fewer people are flying this year, but with airfare this high and climbing, airline executives say that’s just fine.

The number of people screened at U.S. checkpoints is on track for its first annual decline since 2020. Major U.S. carriers have said capturing higher fares is more important than fully filling their planes or flying record numbers of travelers.

“We’re actively prioritizing yield versus load factor and really happy as we see it. It fits right in with the premium investments that we’re making,” American Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Nat Pieper said on the company’s earnings call Thursday.

American’s load factor, a gauge of how full planes are flying, fell to 83.4% in the third quarter from 86% in the same quarter of 2025.

Fares in September were up more than 22% from a year earlier, according to the latest inflation read. Fare tracker Hopper said it expects this holiday season to come with the most expensive ticket prices in years.

The average Southwest Airlines fare in the third quarter, for example, was $231.69, up close to $50 from a year earlier. That doesn’t include Southwest’s new fees, like its extra charges for checked bags or a seat closer to the front of the plane.

The airline’s count of revenue passengers, however, fell 3.2% from a year ago, to about 33.5 million people.

Still, both fares and the passenger counts exceeded Southwest’s expectations.

“Passenger fares came in about $3 above what our forecast was and the more important thing is that passenger volumes also exceeded our expectations,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said on an earnings call Thursday.

Since April — when airlines began warning in earnest about profits taking a hit from the spike in jet fuel — through Thursday, about 9.3 million fewer people were screened at airport checkpoints compared with the same period of 2025, according to the Transportation Security Administration. While that’s down less than 2% from last year, it follows years of growth.

With jet fuel prices more than double year-ago levels — as seen in U.S. Gulf Coast spot prices going for $4.63 a gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — airlines have been focused on recovering as much of the fuel spike as possible.

Even despite some drops, airline executives said during their earnings calls that travel demand overall is robust, especially for profitable premium cabins like business class.

And not every carrier is seeing a decline. United Airlines flew 2.4% more passengers in the third quarter than it did a year ago, and said its unit revenue rose by 16%, the biggest increase since the pandemic.

“I’ve been…