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Almost 3 million individuals boarded flights within the U.S. on Sunday as American air journey continued to surge at a document tempo, surpassing pre-pandemic numbers, in response to Transportation Safety Administration statistics.
TSA screened 2,907,378 individuals touring by way of U.S. airports, the best single-day quantity ever. Air journey has taken three years to surpass the heights reached in 2019, earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Wherever we land [on a final number], we’re totally again to the year-over-year enhance we had been seeing earlier than the pandemic,” a TSA official mentioned.
Throughout the 2019 Thanksgiving weekend, practically 2.9 million passengers flew in a single day. Even earlier than Sunday, that document was damaged this yr, with the earlier busiest day occurring on June 30, the Friday earlier than the Fourth of July vacation.
Since TSA’s inception in 2001, passenger quantity constantly elevated by greater than 4% yearly till January 2020, when journey numbers plummeted because of the pandemic. Officers mentioned the numbers had modestly elevated during the last three years.
Throughout the early months of the pandemic, airline journey practically floor to a halt, forcing carriers to put off or furlough 1000’s of staff. As of September, the U.S. airline business employs practically 808,000 full- and part-time staff, surpassing pre-pandemic ranges by 8.7%, in response to federal knowledge.
Airways for America, a commerce group for all main U.S. air carriers, mentioned airways have labored for months to make sure they’d be ready for the excessive quantity of journey for this yr’s vacation season. Airways have continued aggressively hiring, adjusting schedules and bettering communication with passengers to fight the elevated demand for air journey, in response to the group.
John Heimlich, an economist for Airline for America, mentioned the group predicted early within the pandemic that it might take till 2023 earlier than the business returned to pre-pandemic volumes. He mentioned the business is on observe to surpass the 2019 quantity and anticipates additional development in 2024, albeit at a slower fee.
Los Angeles Worldwide Airport additionally noticed its busiest Thanksgiving vacation journey interval since 2019, because it welcomed 2.46 million vacationers during the last week and a half. Officers mentioned a number of days noticed greater than 220,000 passengers transfer by way of the terminals.
Of the 51,332 scheduled flights throughout the nation Sunday, fewer than 0.5% had been canceled, in response to flight tracker Flight Radar 24.
AAA predicted that 4.7 million individuals would fly over the Thanksgiving vacation interval, the best variety of Thanksgiving air vacationers since 2005 — a 6.6% enhance in contrast with 2022.
“I’m optimistic that what we noticed over Thanksgiving is emblematic of the sort of demand we’ll see this winter,” Heimlich mentioned. The demand “goes to be very robust.”
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