The COVID-19 Pandemic hit the travel industry incredibly hard. Several places from train travel to even those using car services such as Uber lowered heavily. Yet if there is one industry that was hit harder than most, it was air travel. While some countries banned traveling outside the country (and banned travel for those trying to enter), others even went as far as banning air travel within their country. Of course, some were more restrictive than others and it made sense. Considering COVID-19 made its way into several countries by those coming through airports. Now, travel has improved significantly to reach a new post-pandemic record.
Memorial Day this Monday has allowed many to be off of work. On top of this, many children are already out of school. This has allowed families to have what is essentially a 3 to 4-day weekend. It made all the sense in the world for people to take a trip, right? That seemed to be the case, as we’ve now seen the highest level of air travel in roughly three and a half years.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has reported screening 2,658,057 passengers as of Thursday. That bested the previous post-pandemic record by a few thousand. It is thought that, even though the TSA has not reported it as of this writing, the Friday numbers will be even higher. The last time the TSA screened anything higher was back during the Thanksgiving travel period in 2019. On the 27th of November that year, they screened 2,882,915 passengers.
Of course, this took place right before the COVID Pandemic.
New Records For Travel Expected To Continue
[Image via David Tran Photo/Shutterstock.com]
It should be noted that we’ve seen air travel increase dramatically in 2023. Not only has the TSA reported screening more people on average, but we’ve been seeing new post-pandemic records set constantly. On March 10th, 12th, 17th, 24th, & 31st of this year, they screened 2.5 million people. That trend continued the following month, as 2.5 million people were screened on April 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, 16th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, 27th, 28th, & 30th.
Several new records were set throughout this time. Yet May has been when the travel industry has truly started to see records being set. While we did see 2.5 million people screened on May 5th, 7th, 11th, 12th, and 15th…they saw several more afterward. At least 2.6 million were screened starting on May 18th & 19th then again on the 21st of this month. We had already hit post-pandemic highs during this point.
Now the record is set again and we’ll likely be seeing much bigger numbers by June, July, & August.
TSA Administrator, David Pekoske, said they are expecting as many as 10 million passengers over Memorial Day weekend. Meaning we’re going to see a huge weekend of screenings. He claimed:
“We figure that we will see 2.6 million people on a regular basis across this holiday weekend. From TSA’s perspective, we are ready. We have more staff on hand this year than last year which is a good thing because we have more passengers this year than we had last year.”
TSA Wait Times
Sadly for passengers, there will still be a normal TSA wait time average of 30 minutes or so. However, Pekoske is hoping this can be sped up. Screening lines for TSA PreCheck Lanes will be around 10 minutes or less, so this might be the better option. You just need to have signed up for the TSA PreCheck Program well before the day you plan to travel. Therefore, it would be good to do so on the day you make travel plans.
Regarding the PreCheck Program, the TSA announced an expansion to it this past week. Teens between 13 to 17 are allowed to accompany parents/guardians who enrolled in PreCheck through their security screening. As long as they are traveling on the same reservation. PreCheck designation will still need to be shown on the teen’s boarding pass, however.