The Transportation Security Agency reported its highest airport volume since just before the COVID-19 pandemic, numbers that come during a holiday weekend where millions of people are expected to travel.
“[TSA] officers screened 2,490,490 people at airport security checkpoints nationwide yesterday, Friday, July 1,” agency spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein tweeted. “It was the highest checkpoint volume since Feb. 11, 2020, when 2,507,588 people were screened. We are back to pre-pandemic checkpoint volume.”
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Friday’s passenger volume marked a 13% increase from July of last year, which fell on the Thursday before the Fourth of July. This year’s number of passengers going through U.S. airports also eclipsed the 2.35 million screened at security checkpoints on the Friday before the Fourth of July in 2019, but at the time, it was nearly a week ahead of the holiday.
The high number of travelers comes amid a nationwide labor shortage in airline employees. As a result, by noon on Saturday, more than 500 flights had been canceled and almost 2,000 more had been delayed, according to FlightAware.
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A total of 6,611 flights into, out of, or within the United States were delayed on Friday, and 558 U.S. flights scheduled for that same day were canceled. More than 1,800 flights were canceled as of Wednesday morning, with an estimated 9,340 delays taking place. Routes have even been permanently canceled as a result of the labor shortage.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the average number of daily cases since June is 109,944 cases, with about a third of the people in the U.S. vaccinated with at least their first dose. The country’s last large spike came in January of this year, which saw over 933,000 cases.
