The airline industry is slowly creeping back to pre-pandemic levels of travel, at least during the start of this holiday season.
The Transportation Security Administration processed 2,213,716 passengers on Sunday, November 21, the fourth consecutive day that more than 2 million fliers have taken to the air in U.S. airports.
That figure more than doubles the 1,047,934 that flew on the same day in 2020 during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and is 95 percent of the capacity of the 2,321,546 fliers who went through security on November 21, 2019.
The industry uses 2019 as a benchmark for comparison during the pandemic era.
The TSA defines the Thanksgiving portion of the holiday travel season as having started on Friday, November 19 and running through Sunday, November 28.
Airlines have flown more than 2 million passengers in the U.S. in six of the last seven days. There hasn't been a stretch like that since the TSA processed 2 million or more single-day passengers on five straight days during the height of the 2021 summer travel season from July 29-August 2.
In fact, the 2,242,956 passengers who went through security on Friday, November 19, represented the greatest number of fliers on one day since February 28, 2020, when 2,353,150 took to the air. After that, air travel plummeted when COVID-19 took hold in the U.S. By April 13, 2020, the number of single-day passengers dropped to just 87,534 - just three percent of what it was on the same day in 2019.
Also, the TSA announced that 93 percent of its employees have been vaccinated as per the federal vaccine mandate, assuring airline customers that the requirement will not disrupt holiday travel.
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