This is only 23% of the number of passengers who flew the same day a year ago, before the pandemic and about half of the 1.2 million passengers who flew on Wednesday set a pandemic record for air travel. On Thursday, Christmas Eve, 846,520 people passed through the TSA checkpoints.
The smaller number of passengers on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day marks a break before the numbers start ticking again as people leave home on holiday.
Sunday is expected to be another big day for air travel, travel experts say. TSA numbers show that in the last week, almost 7 million people were examined at airport security checkpoints.
The rush of the holiday trip comes even after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to stay home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The increase in air travel raises new fears among health experts in another jump in Covid-19 infections, similar to a peak in the previous record of the air travel pandemic set around Thanksgiving.
“We need to try to bend the curve, stop this exponential growth, and so we ask the American public to prevent these infections and avoid traveling and washing their hands, wearing a mask and keeping their distance,” said Dr. Henry Walke. , The CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager, said earlier this month.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS earlier this month that he will not spend the Christmas holidays with his daughters for the first time in more than 30 years.
The increase in travel also comes as executives at several airlines seek to bring back thousands of workers who were hired in the fall due to the depressed number of travelers.
Congress’ latest Covid-19 rescue bill includes an extension of the airline’s Wage Support Program, which provides $ 15 billion in assistance to employ more than 32,000 United (UAL) and American airlines (AAL) employees were launched in September. The companies say the extra funds are enough to pay those workers by March 31.
– CNN’s Chauncey Alcorn contributed to this report.
