US Air Travel Tops 2019 Numbers For First Time Since Pandemic

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 COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, TSA Spokesperson Lisa Farbstein posted on Tuesday. This shows a significant rise to travel activities around the world.

“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.

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.