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Comment by snake_plissken | Hacker News Reader

This is really cool. From where are they sourcing this data?

And on the Jan 2021 top US domestic routes, what's up with those Atlanta to Ft Lauderdale/Miami/Tampa/Orlando routes? We're only partly through the month so that maybe that's why they are listed but still, I was surprised.

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OAG aggregate timetable data from airlines and distribute that aggregated feed.

You'll note their data is "seats" not "passengers" i.e. if an A380 flies from London to Dubai they count that as 525 seats as opposed to however many people took the flight.

Good point. Might, then, also reflect pressure from governments to keep flying, no matter the pax load factor.

Tax law. NY citizens are avoiding taxes and often transfer through ATL. They can live in FL for more than ~180 days and they don't pay state income tax. We call them "snow birds".

"you maintain a permanent place of abode in New York State for substantially all of the taxable year and spend 184 days or more in New York State during the taxable year, whether or not you are domiciled in New York State for any portion of the taxable year. Note: Any part of a day is a day for this purpose."

https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/file/pit_definitions.htm

Why would this be specifically reflected in Jan travel, as opposed to other reasons, e.g. traveling to enjoy warmer weather? Or a non lockdown state in the current situation?

Holidays?

Snowbirds are known to spend the winter there.

Summer is not a great time to be in Florida during hurricane season with fairly heavy rains.

Why would they wait until January? Cold weather starts in Nov at the latest.

Holiday travel?

This page doesn't have previous months on it. Or I haven't found it with ten seconds of looking.

Oh I see, they might come back to NY for holidays.

Going to Florida for a month over the holidays won’t help with the 184 day requirement

As in, snowbirds go south for the winter, return for the holiday period, and fly back down.

To the extent you're suggesting you can easily live outside of NY but collect tax-free NY income, it's not really true. Any NY source income remains taxable by the state. In practice, this covers remote work too, despite the safe harbor provisions of TSB-M-06(5)I.

[1] https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/memos/income/m06_5i.pdf

The link you gave is about Telecommuters working out of NY but live in FL. This is a pretty small group (no source). It's the retirees and pensioners that get the great deal..

Southwest has a big presence in ATL and FLL. Delta also beefed up its Florida routes. The rest of the country (Likely mostly the Midwest) traveling through ATL to take advantage of Florida's lax COVID restrictions.

Florida’s not under lockdown.

ATL is the busiest passenger airport in the world, so I think that just reflects that a large proportion of traffic to and from Florida will route through there, plus just the usual seasonal traffic.

It’s people going there to get drunk on sand and avoid the cold

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