The U.S. economy has returned 12.5 million jobs since the depths of the recession in April 2020. But it’s still down 9.9 million jobs, including 3.9 million jobs in the leisure and hospitality industry.
To get to a complete recovery, travel needs to fully return.
But how long will that take? To get an indication, Fortune teamed up with SurveyMonkey to ask Americans how soon they’ll be ready to jump on a plane. The Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll of 2,616 U.S. adults was conducted between Feb. 11 and 15. Our margin of error is 3 percentage points.
We found that 41% of U.S. adults are already comfortable enough to fly. That’s up from 27% in our July 2020 poll. (We asked the question only to Americans who were fliers prior to the onset of the pandemic.)
But the data tells us six in 10 Americans still aren’t ready to fly. The distribution of the vaccines hasn’t coincided with a big uptick in fliers ready to get back into the sky. If Americans remain timid even after a successful vaccine rollout, that could undermine bullish economic forecasts. (Goldman Sachs is currently projecting 2021 will be the strongest year for economic growth since 1984.)
Over the course of the past eight months, we’ve seen a 14 percentage point uptick in the number of Americans who are ready to jump back on a plane.
A rise in that figure is key to saving not only the U.S. airline carrier industry (whose revenues are down a staggering 65%), but also tourism, including in regional economies like Las Vegas.
But the figure will go up only if Americans feel safe. So, in a way, it’s also a measure of how Americans view the success of the vaccine. In the coming months, Fortune Analytics will continue to track this question.
One might assume the lack of flying would result in diminished airline brands. Nope. In fact, all eight of the airlines we measured saw their net favorability scores improve during the pandemic. The reason? Perhaps Americans like the safety measures airlines have been taking. Or, more simply, when Americans aren’t flying, they also aren’t having bad flight experiences.
When it comes to the airlines measured, Southwest outdoes the rest. Southwest’s net favorability score (+47 points) edges out Delta (+43 points), American (+37 points), and United (+33 points). The lowest rating goes to Spirit (+3 points). But even Spirit’s score is up from pre-COVID-19, when it was underwater at –12 points.
*Methodology: The Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll was conducted among a national sample of 2,616 U.S. adults between Feb. 11 and 15. This survey’s modeled error estimate is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The findings have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography.
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