TSA Sets New Single-Day Pandemic Mark for Air Travelers

Five days after setting a single-day record for the most number of fliers in the pandemic era, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) re-set the mark and is closing in on its prediction for the number of air travelers during the Thanksgiving Holiday.

The TSA processed 2,311,978 passengers on Wednesday, November 24 – Thanksgiving Eve, traditionally one of the biggest flying days of the year. That represented 88 percent of what airline capacity was at on November 24, 2019. The industry uses 2019 as its barometer for comparison as to the return of air travel.

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The TSA said it expects more than 20 million people to fly during Thanksgiving, and it’s going to come awfully close to hitting that and, perhaps, surpassing it.

The agency considers the Thanksgiving travel period this year to run from Friday, November 19 to Monday, November 28. Although traffic dipped to 1,382,230 fliers on Thanksgiving Day, as expected, the TSA so far has screened 14,444,472 during the holiday.

With three days left in the defined Thanksgiving window, airlines need to average 1,851,843 per day to hit the TSA prediction of 20 million.

Prior to Thanksgiving Day, the TSA also set a pandemic era record of seven consecutive days of two million or more passengers going through U.S. airports. That was the most since 12 straight days of two million+ fliers during the Christmas 2019-New Year’s 2020 holiday from December 24, 2019, to January 4, 2020.