Busy Labor Day weekend expected at RDU; COVID may make it the last for a while
It will feel a little like old times at Raleigh-Durham International Airport this weekend as a surprisingly busy summer travel season comes to a close.
RDU expects 120,000 passengers to pass through the airport from Friday through Monday. That’s only about 6,000 fewer than it expected over Labor Day weekend in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic decimated air travel.
Friday is expected to be the busiest day, with 34,000 passengers coming and going at RDU. Labor Day will likely be the second-busiest weekend at the airport so far this year, following July 4th.
Passenger traffic has grown at RDU each month since February, driven largely by leisure travelers taking vacations or visiting family after a year of pandemic captivity. So many people were coming to the airport that RDU reopened its Economy 3 remote parking lot just before Memorial Day weekend, something it didn’t expect to have to do until 2024.
But RDU doesn’t expect to be this crowded again until late December. While summer is the airport’s busiest season, business travelers usually make up much of the loss of leisure travel in the fall. With COVID-19 still rampant around the country, that’s not expected to happen this year.
“As students return to school and leisure travel subsides, RDU’s seven-month growth streak may be on hold until the December holidays,” airport spokeswoman Crystal Feldman said Tuesday.
Airlines delay plans to restore some flights
The resurgence of COVID-19 this summer has curtailed some plans by airlines to resume service from the Triangle.
Delta Air Lines, RDU’s busiest carrier by passenger traffic, had planned to resume nonstop flights to nine cities in September, all of them traditional business destinations such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Newark and Cincinnati. The airline has either delayed the start of those flights or simply taken them off the schedule altogether.
And Air Canada had planned to resume three daily nonstops from RDU to Toronto and one to Montreal on Sept. 7. It now plans a single daily nonstop to Toronto in September, followed by a second in October and the resumption of Montreal service in January 2022.
Still, the return of nonstop flights to Toronto will be a milestone in RDU’s recovery from the pandemic. An Air Canada arrival from Toronto on March 31, 2020, was the last international flight at RDU as air travel collapsed in the early weeks of the pandemic. Toronto will now become the third international destination from RDU, after JetBlue’s flights to Cancun, Mexico, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, which started late last year.
And in another sign of normalcy at RDU, United Airlines has reopened its passenger lounge in Terminal 2, joining Delta and American Airlines in restoring that perk for frequently travelers.
RDU says an August survey of people who have flown through the airport shows growing confidence in the safety of air travel. The survey found 79% of respondents said they would feel safe traveling through the airport in August, up from 54% during a similar survey in March.
In addition, 90% of surveyed passengers said they were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That compares to 60% of North Carolina residents 18 or older, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 2:27 PM.
