U.S. air travel following Thanksgiving hits highest level since mid-March

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said Monday that a record number of people passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Sunday since mid-March, as Americans head home from Thanksgiving travels.

“TSA officers screened 1,176,091 individuals at checkpoints on Sunday, Nov. 29. It’s the highest number since mid-March,” TSA Spokesperson Lisa Farbstein wrote in a tweet.
By comparison, last year 2,882,915 people were screened the Sunday after Thanksgiving, she said, noting that last year’s volume remains the highest ever in TSA history.

Despite the lighter-than-usual Thanksgiving travel, the number will likely raise eyebrows among public health officials and experts, who had urged Americans to refrain from traveling for the holiday and warned against traditional gatherings with families and friends.

Since the pandemic cratered air travel in mid-March, checkpoints across the nation have screened more than 1 million passengers on only five days. Four of the five occurred over the Thanksgiving holiday period, i.e., Nov. 20 (the Friday before Thanksgiving), Nov. 22 (the Sunday before), Nov. 25 (the day before) and Nov. 29 (the Sunday after).

Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said he worries that crowds at airports during Thanksgiving holiday are going to get the country into “even more trouble” than it is in right now.

“What we expect, unfortunately, as we go for the next couple of weeks into December is that we might see a surge superimposed on the surge we are already in,”

Fauci said in an interview with NBC News Sunday.

As air travel hits the highest level since mid-March, hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients reached an all-time high of 93,238 on Sunday, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).