While travel has surged toward normalcy during other major holidays, data from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) shows the number of Americans passing through airports actually surpassed pre-pandemic levels at some points over the July 4 long weekend.
The TSA checkpoint numbers updated Tuesday show just over 10 million people were screened between July 1 and July 5, marking a new pandemic record.
Overall, air travel was up nearly 200% from this time last year, when roughly 3.4 million people passed through security checkpoints amid still pervasive travel restrictions during the July 4 holiday.
This year’s travel numbers were still beat out by 2019’s, as more than 12 million Americans were screened to hit the skies before the onset of Covid-19.
However, on two days over the July 4 weekend, the number of people screened by TSA actually surpassed pre-pandemic levels, which is the first time this has happened since summer 2020.
Some 2.15 million people passed through security checkpoints on Thursday and 2.2 million on Friday, versus 2.09 million and 2.18 during the same days in 2019.
