That’s just 23 percent of the number of travelers who flew the same day a year ago, before the pandemic, and on half of the 1.2 million passengers who flew on Wednesday, setting a record for pandemic air travel. On Thursday, Christmas Eve, 846,520 people passed TSA control points.
The smallest number of passengers on Christmas Eve and Day marks a lull before the numbers start to increase again, as people return home after vacation trips.
Sunday is expected to be another great day for air travel, travel experts say. TSA figures show that in the past week, nearly 7 million people have been screened at airport security checkpoints.
The wave of vacation travel comes even after the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to stay home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The increase in air travel is fueling new fears among health experts in another leap in Covid-19 infections, similar to a peak recorded after the previous air travel pandemic record set on Thanksgiving Day.
“We need to try to bend the curve, stop this exponential increase, and therefore, we are really asking the American public to prevent these infections and avoid travel and wash their hands, wear a mask and keep their distance,” Covid-19 of the CDC said earlier this month.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS earlier this month that he would not spend the Christmas holiday with his daughters for the first time in more than 30 years.
The increase in travel also occurs when executives at various airlines seek to bring back thousands of workers who were laid off in the fall due to the reduced number of trips.
Congressional Covid-19’s latest relief bill includes an extension to the aviation industry’s Payroll Support Program, which reserves $ 15 billion in assistance to rehire more than 32,000 United (UAL) and American Airlines (AAL) employees obtained leave in September. The companies say the additional funds are sufficient to pay these workers by March 31.
–CNN’s Chauncey Alcorn contributed to this report.
