Despite the CDC avidly cautioning Americans against holiday travel amid COVID-19 and health experts' dire predictions about potential viral spread, Thanksgiving eve 2020 proved to be the pandemic's busiest day yet for air travel.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported screening 1,070,967 passengers the day before Thanksgiving-the most since the pandemic hit the industry on March 16, 2020. Last year, 2,624,250 people passed through TSA airport checkpoints on the day before Thanksgiving, meaning that traffic this year represented around 60 percent.
The Sunday of Thanksgiving week, November 22, saw almost as many travelers take to the skies to be with relatives and friends for the holiday-1,047,934, compared with 2,321,546 on the same weekday of 2019. Over one million passengers also flew on Friday, November 20, to reach their holiday destinations in time for Turkey Day.
"It's the highest volume since March 16 and only the fourth time passenger throughput has topped one million since that date," TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein wrote in a tweet. Pandemic-era TSA airport screenings first passed the million-traveler mark on October 18, The Washington Post reported.
In its updated Thanksgiving travel advisory, issued last week, the CDC wrote: "Travel may increase your chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. Postponing travel and staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others this year." The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the American Nurses Association also published an open letter to the American public discouraging holiday travel this year.
Still, according to a survey conducted by Business Insider, 37 percent of Americans said that they didn't plan on changing how they celebrated Thanksgiving this year, despite the still-rising threat of inadvertently spreading or contracting COVID-19. Most of those respondents (57 percent) even reported that they planned on mixing households during their indoor Thanksgiving celebrations without wearing masks or opening windows for added ventilation.
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, subscribe to the daily TravelPulse newsletter.
Topics From This Article to Explore
