The number of Americans traveling by air over the Labor Day holiday weekend exceeded the number of travelers in the same period in 2019 – marking the first time holiday weekend travel volume exceeded that of 2019 since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, TSA Spokesperson Lisa Farbstein tweeted on Tuesday.
“During the Labor Day holiday, TSA screened 8.76 million travelers between Fri., Sept. 2 and Mon., Sept. 5,” Farbstein shared, adding that the total represented 102% of checkpoint volume for the same pre-pandemic holiday weekend in 2019.
While Labor Day is known as a busy travel period in the US – The American Automobile Association forecasted that one-third of Americans would travel by road, rail or plane over the holiday weekend – travel has mostly rebounded in the USA since the onset of the pandemic.
After averaging roughly 2-2.5 million passengers per day at US airports before the pandemic, air traffic dropped to a low of roughly 90,000 per day in April 2020. Travel began rebounding to over 1 million passengers a day in March 2021 and is now very close to pre-pandemic levels, according to TSA figures.
US air travel's shaky recovery from COVID-19
While a large portion of pre-pandemic travelers have returned, TSA data shows that the number of people through checkpoints remains below pre-pandemic levels on most days.
Further, the sharp recovery of global travel in recent months has led to a myriad of issues at airports, such as flight delays, lost luggage, long wait times, and other complications usually related to understaffed airlines and airports.