Holiday Travel Set a New Record This July Fourth Weekend

If you were looking for more evidence that travelers in the U.S. were making up for lost time as far as their travel plans are concerned, you’d find plenty to back up that assertion across the nation’s airports. At the beginning of the holiday weekend, the TSA issued an estimate that this weekend would set a new record for air travelers passing through TSA checkpoints, eclipsing the previous record, which was set in the bygone days of 2019.

That seems to be precisely what’s happened. The Washington Post reports that on Friday, June 30, 2.9 million people made their way through security checkpoints. That figure comes directly from the TSA; as the Post article points out, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend 2019 was the previous record holder.

Also notable: this record was hit despite there being significantly fewer flights this weekend than there were during the fall holiday in question four years ago.

Here Are the US Airports Where Security and Customs Waits Are Longest

A new study breaks down the numbers

The setting of this new record does prompt a number of questions — including whether Thanksgiving this year will see even higher rates of people looking to travel by plane. Even with recent delays and cancellations affecting airlines, this holiday has been one where air travel has surged — with, potentially, more travel milestones to come later in the year.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…