SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Airports may be seeing an uptick in travel compared to the rest of the pandemic but officials at San Francisco International Airport say it seems like more people are adhering to the new stay-at-home orders this month, compared to last.
“We’re seeing a slight decline in activity compared to Thanksgiving,” Doug Yakel said.
In what he deems the best metric possible, SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel says comparing this week’s holiday travel numbers to that of Thanksgiving week shows quite the dip.
“During Thanksgiving this year, passenger activity was about 75% less than it was in 2019. As we look at this December holiday, we’re over 80% lower than we were in December 2019. So yes numbers are slowly recovering but we are seeing a dip since Thanksgiving, which may suggest more people are adhering to the newer health orders,” Yakel said.
Yakel says on it’s busiest days this Thanksgiving, the airport saw about 20-21 thousand passengers.
This week, they haven’t gotten close to that.
“Yesterday we did about 14,000, today we may do about 18-19k so those numbers are lower than what we saw at Thanksgiving and far from what we saw last year, last year we saw about 80k people a day,” Yakel said.
For those that are still choosing to travel, PA announcements every 20 minutes inside the airport act as a reminder of the new quarantine rule.
The airport is also flooded with digital and static signage about mask-wearing and social distancing mandates.
“Finding out when you land that you’re subject to a quarantine really should be the first notification you’re getting,” Yakel said. “Even when you log into free WIFI the first page that you see is a notification about the quarantine requirement so we’re doing everything we can.”
While it’s good for public health to see this slight dip in travel during a holiday week — Yakel says this pandemic has forced about 75% of the workforce at SFO to either be laid off or furloughed.