Washington (CNN Business) After air travel broke a pandemic record on Wednesday, the TSA says it screened 846,520 people at airports nationwide on Thursday.
The Christmas Eve figure does not signal the end of the holiday travel rush , but rather a lull before people who left town for the Friday holiday begin coming home. TSA numbers show that in the last week, 7,189,521 people were screened at TSA checkpoints.
Christmas Eve follows six straight days of US air travel numbers near or more than a million passengers. On Wednesday, 1,191,123 travelers set a record of the pandemic. The number of people who flew on Christmas Eve is a third of the same day a year ago when more than 2.5 million people flew.
United UAL American Airlines AAL The depressed travel numbers forced US airlines to lay off tens of thousands of employees in the fall. But executives fromandannounced plans Tuesday to bring back thousands of their furloughed workers in response to Congress passing its latest Covid-19 relief bill.
The new law includes an extension of the airline industry's Payroll Support Program , which sets aside $15 billion in assistance to bring back more than 32,000 United and American Airlines employees who were furloughed in September. The companies say the additional funds are enough to pay those workers through March 31.
black_flag_4ever on December 25th, 2020 at 23:15 UTC »
People finally get an excuse to not see family for Xmas and they blew it.
never_retire on December 25th, 2020 at 23:05 UTC »
Well the politicians were leading by example
mdjak1 on December 25th, 2020 at 23:04 UTC »
We have averaged about 1 million per day for the last 7 days.
https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput