The Sunday after Thanksgiving this year was a record day for U.S. air travel, according to newly released government data.
The Transportation Security Administration announced Tuesday that it processed 2,729,770 passengers and crew on Nov. 25, beating the previous record set on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2004, when 2.71 million people went through TSA security to board flights. Last year, 2.61 million people flew on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
On a typical day, 2.1 million passengers pass through government security before they board a flight. Officers saw more than 600,000 more travelers than normal on Sunday.
“It was all hands on deck during the Thanksgiving holiday week. Close coordination with airline and airport partners, new technology, enhanced screening and more travelers enrolled in TSA Pre✓, TSA used every tool to secure air travel for the millions of passengers traveling to their holiday destinations,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement. “I thank our entire TSA team and industry partners for their work and attention to detail during a very hectic time, ensuring safe and secure travel for all passengers.”
The 17-year-old agency warned in early November it expected to set a new record for the total number of airline travelers in the days leading up to and after Thanksgiving.
In addition to the Sunday record, TSA also set a record for the number of passengers who flew during the holiday travel period — 25,652,287 in total — from Friday, Nov. 16, through Monday, Nov. 26. That number was up 6 percent from 2017, which was also a record holiday travel period.
Pekoske had vowed in early November to keep lines short but not at the price of administering subpar security. Data from the 11-day heavy travel period showed 95 percent of all travelers waited less than 20 minutes in a security checkpoint line and 99 percent of TSA PreCheck enrollees waited less than 10 minutes.
He also credited the booming economy for the uptick in business at airports nationwide.
“The good news is the U.S. economy is growing very strongly. Passenger air travel is growing very strongly along with it,” Pekoske said at a press conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this month.
TSA plans to deploy an additional 80 canine officers and 1,200 TSA officers across the country’s 440 federalized airports. The agency is comprised of 43,000 officers.
More than 17 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Pekoske warned that threats to the aviation industry have not lessened.
“The threats to aviation security are persistent. They are no less than they were in the 2002, 2003 time frame,” he said. “Please don’t assume that because you don’t hear about aviation threats in the media all the time like you might have immediately following 9/11. Those threats are very much still there.”
TSA screened 771.5 million passengers in 2017 — 30 million more people than in 2016.