Labor Day air travel caps record-setting summer, in three charts

By Alex Leeds Matthews, CNN

(CNN) — A record number of travelers is expected to shuttle through the nation’s airports this Labor Day weekend, with as many as 17 million passengers expected from Thursday through the following Wednesday, the Transportation Security Administration said.

The agency, which tracks the numbers of passengers it screens for security, is projecting as many as 2.86 million passengers on Friday alone, in what’s expected to be the busiest air travel day of the holiday.

That would exceed the number of passengers screened on the same day last year and in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted air travel across the country.

All 10 of the busiest days in 2024 occurred earlier this summer, with a peak of more than 3 million passengers passing through checkpoints on July 7. Since Memorial Day weekend, the agency has screened nearly 240 million passengers, averaging 2.7 million daily, it said.

The anticipated holiday traffic continues a trend in 2024, which has seen higher traffic at the nation’s airports throughout the year. The expected Labor Day passengers, however, won’t even break into the agency’s top ten record-setting volume days in 2024.

During the same period of time in 2019, the daily average passenger volume was 2.3 million. Air travel dropped off markedly during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, only recovering to levels similar to those of before the virus in 2023. This summer’s surge appears to be in spite of the virus, with the US expecting its largest summer wave of infections in two years.

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