Amtrak carried 99.7 percent as many passenger-miles in August 2024 as in the same month of 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report. This was up from 85.1 percent in July. While Amtrak was still slightly short of pre-pandemic levels, domestic airline flights comfortably carried 8.7 percent more passengers in August 2024 than in 2019, according to TSA passenger counts.
The Department of Transportation has not yet posted August highway or transit data but when it does the results will be reported here.
While Amtrak numbers are in passenger-miles (which is the preferred measure) and airline numbers are in passenger counts, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics show that these follow one another fairly closely. In June, the most recent month for which such data are available, domestic flights carried 6.8 percent more passenger-miles than in June 2019. Continue reading
