Officials from AAA Travel (AAA) have announced that 39.2 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more this Memorial Day holiday weekend, reports Travel Pulse. The estimates for this holiday, which runs from May 26-30, indicate an increase of 8.3 percent growth over 2021, with air travel up 25 percent over last year and additionally surpassing 2019 levels. Despite gas prices reaching historical totals, AAA expects 34.9 million Americans plan to travel by car, an increase of 4.6 percent over 2021. “Memorial Day is always a good predictor of what’s to come for summer travel,” stated AAA Travel senior vice president Paula Twidale. “Based on our projections, summer travel isn’t just heating up, it will be on fire.” AAA predicts that busiest days for traveling by car will be May 26 and 27, while the Thursday before the holiday will be the busiest for air travelers.

US airlines are pressing the Biden administration to lift a rule requiring nearly all international air passengers to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test before entering the country reports Skift. Airline executives say many Americans are not traveling abroad due to concerns they will test positive in a foreign country and become stranded. Last Friday, industry group Airlines for America, noted a survey of its carriers estimated that dropping COVID-19 testing requirements would bring in an additional 4.3 million international passengers and $1.7 billion in incremental revenue. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that while he did not think the testing rule would “be there forever,” lifting it would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be confident “relaxing it would not harm the progress that we’ve made against the virus.” After a meeting with Buttigieg in Washington DC last Thursday, British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps noted, “My sense is that it’s moving towards endgame […] My sense is that by the summer.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday issued the final paperwork on United Airlines' Pratt & Whitney-powered Boeing 777s, allowing the aircraft to resume flights, reports Business Travel News. The aircraft, grounded since February 2021, is now on schedule for May 26, with expectations to ramp up to between 30 and 35 aircraft by July. United SVP and CCO Andrew Nocella stated, “We have 52 of [the 777s], which represents about 10 percent of our capacity. So it’s really, really material.” Nocella noted an initial concern for this summer that both business and leisure demand was "coming too quickly," so it made changes to "slow it down" to keep it within the capacity available. While summer will be busy, United predicts this fall will show a large increase in business travel, with demand "maybe even go beyond 2019 levels, particularly for domestic, Latin and Europe.”

Miami International Airport (MIA) will begin offering biometric boarding via facial recognition on all international flights sometime in 2023, reports Travel Weekly. According to MIA officials and technology partner SITA, the installation will cover all of MIA’s 130-plus gates and will be the largest implementation of biometric exit technology at a US airport. At biometric gates, departing international travelers are not required to show a passport or boarding pass. Instead, a biometric facial-recognition system takes a photo, which is then matched to passport photos that the Department of Homeland Security keeps on file. This week, MIA released a video from biometric testing trials, showing that the process takes only a few seconds per passenger. Since 2020, MIA has used this technology to document checks for arriving international passengers.

Japan has announced that it will test a limited reopening to some tourists from Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States later this month, marking the first time the country has welcomed tourists since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports Travel Market Report. According to a spokesperson from the Japan Tourism Agency, the plan is to start with 50 tourists traveling on a fixed travel itinerary. Tourists must be fully vaccinated and boosted, have travel insurance, show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of departure, and test again upon arrival. Japan currently accepts about 10,000 travelers per day, most of whom are foreign nationals entering the country under the supervision of receiving organizations and not for tourist purposes. The government is considering doubling this cap to 20,000 in June, with a further reopening to tourists at that time should the current test go well.