As many Americans travel to celebrate the US Independence Day (4th) holiday, the number of passengers by plane is the highest since February 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spokesperson Lisa Favstein tweeted on the 2nd, “On the 1st, airport security checkpoints across the country searched 2,49,490 people. It is the highest since then.”
This figure is a 13% increase compared to July 1 of last year.
According to the TSA, an average of 2.33 million passengers per day passed through airport screening for a week through July 1. This is close to the daily average of 2.38 million people during the same period in 2019, when there was no Corona 19, and shows that travel demand has returned to pre-coronavirus, the Associated Press reported.
However, as flights continue to be unable to keep up with travel demand due to problems such as a shortage of manpower at airlines, cancellations and delays are occurring one after another during this holiday season.
According to flight tracking site FlightAware, 550 flights to and from the United States were canceled and 2,200 delayed until noon on the same day.