Southwest, United Seeing Modest Improvements in Flight Demand

Two of the nation's largest airlines on Tuesday provided updates that suggest the worst of the COVID-19 induced travel slump might be behind us, encouraging signs for an industry feared to be headed for a liquidity crisis if travel demand does not quickly return.

Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) in a regulatory filing said it "has recently experienced a modest improvement in passenger demand, bookings, and trip cancellations, resulting in month-to-date net positive bookings ... where new passenger bookings outpaced trip cancellations."

Net bookings were negative through most of March and April. Southwest said it expects its load factor, roughly a measure of how full its planes are, to be in the range of 25% to 30% for May, an improvement over the previous estimate of 5% to 10%.