I flew into Newark , yesterday afternoon and the airport was very busy. In fact, given that non-passengers weren't allowed past the security checkpoints, the number of people in the terminal looked about normal for a saturday afternoon this time of year. The president's club(I visited 2 of them) also busy. I was told by the agent at the club that Friday , Newark had a passenger load of 19000. I remember being told my a manager at Newark, that the peak load is about 28000.

Given that flights are down 20% and we are outside of the peak travel period. I think these are excellent numbers.

BTW: On my flight from PBI, I asked the FA how full the flight was, she said 126 passengers. It was a business first equipped 757 which has 172 seats. Thats close to 75%. Palm beach airport was very crowded also.

I agree. Both days I was at EWR last week were seemingly very busy and almost normal as I'd noted.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum.../002838-2.html

Came back last night from a $105 round trip SEA-EWR-FLL. All four segments were close to or completely full...no more than four or five empty seats.

Given that SEA-EWR has been cut from 5 to 3 flights a day, and likely similiar cuts on EWR-FLL, it wasn't really too surprising.

Service was great as well...I haven't flown CO for many years and was shocked to see how it stands apart from US.

Hmmm...I had quite different experience yesterday.

Outbound 8:55 EWR-CVG (Express), the eService kiosks were fairly busy, but there were exactly 3 people in line at the main check-in desks at 7:30 AM. The gate area was somewhat crowded, but my ERJ-145 had a load of about 40-50%. Seatmap on the eService screen showed a much more full flight - apparently quite some no-shows.

Return (19:40) CVG-EWR (also Express) was even more empty - despite the 17:25 flight having been cancelled, we only had 12 of 50 seats filled - two of those by employees.

On the outbound, I observed the gate-checked baggage, and nearly every piece had an Elite tag - apparently, either all CO flyers are Elites, or its only the heavy travelers that have returned.

As a semi-related aside, w/end trip JFK-ZRH-EWR on SR - outbound (Thursday) was 50% in economy, 10% in business (didn't see First). Sunday return had 90% load, but only because JFK departure at about the same time had been cancelled. You could hear echoes in the Terminal B immigration hall.

EWR-LGW Wednesday (9/26): 17 or so on BF (on a 777--the back cabin of BF was completely empty). I don't remember exactly how many were in coach, but it was quite a bit less than half full.

LGW-EWR Monday 10/1: 5 (yes that's right, FIVE) in BF (on a 767) and either 24 or 26 in coach.

The President's Club at LGW was very nearly deserted. As was the Virgin Clubhouse at EWR, but on the other hand, the Virgin lounge had pretty much nothing at all to eat, unless one likes stale crumbs of blue corn tortilla chips and bruised bananas.

I went ORD-EWR-FLL-EWR-ORD on Continental yesterday. I'm only an HP Silver and I was hoping to get maybe 1 upgrade out of 4 segments.I was upgraded on all four. When I checked in at ORD the gate agent said F was wide open on all of my segments.There were empty seats in F on all of my flights. In coach it looked like the flights were barely half full.

[This message has been edited by Ord26 (edited 10-03-2001).]