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.

At the New York Hilton in Midtown Manhattan on Friday night, the aviation industry held its annual Wings Club gala, honoring Ed Bastian, CEO of profit-leader Delta Air Lines.

North American airline CEOs and other executives at the black-tie bash told CNBC that demand trends aren’t worrying them, but persistently high, profit-crimping fuel prices are.

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 matters more than fully filling 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.

Plane ticket prices have skyrocketed as airlines grapple with a spike in jet fuel prices, their biggest expense after labor, and pass more of those costs on to customers.

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 revenue passenger count, 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 than in the same period of 2025, according to the Transportation Security Administration. That’s down less than 2% from last year, but it follows years of growth.

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

Despite some drops, airline executives said during their earnings calls that overall travel…