Airlines Wrap Up Thanksgiving Travel Period With Record Numbers for Pandemic Era

The Transportation Security Administration predicted earlier this month that the Thanksgiving holiday travel season, which they defined as running from Friday, November 19 to Sunday, November 28, would attract more than 20 million fliers.

Airlines are rejoicing today as Sunday was the busiest air travel day since the start of the pandemic some 20 months ago, pushing the 10-day total to 20,882,947 people processed through security checkpoints at U.S. airports for the Thanksgiving holiday.

There were 2,451,300 people who took to the air on Sunday to fly home from seeing family and friends. That was 85 percent of the capacity that flew on the same day in 2019, which the airline industry uses as a comparison to gauge its comeback.

The 10-day Thanksgiving total was 89 percent of the capacity that filled airline seats during the similar holiday period in 2019.

The single-day mark was more than 100 percent above last year’s total of 1,176,091 fliers on November 28.

The previous pandemic era high was four days prior on Wednesday, November 24, Thanksgiving Eve, when 2.311.978 people flew.

The 2.45 million air travelers were the most in a single day since February 15, 2020, just before the pandemic started to reach U.S. shores, when the TSA processed 2,494,922 people.