Travelers headed toward Christmas and 2015 holiday at US airports were already in the record books when those holiday flights departed. According to a TSA spokeswoman, 2.3 million passengers took flights between Nov. 21, 2018 and Jan. 5, 2019, breaking the record set in 2015.
TSA data, acquired by Fox News in conjunction with the Associated Press, also showed that there were 2.6 million passengers in-country by Nov. 21. TSA usually does not break down passenger figures for specific days.
The largest number of passengers was flown on Nov. 21, according to TSA data.
A top TSA official said Monday that a “pandemic” was underway after a predicted flu pandemic was not expected to cause a severe outbreak like the Swine Flu that caused a significant increase in travel in 2009.
In addition to numbers of passengers leaving, Fox said passengers in the US have been traveling through airports in record numbers. According to data from the Department of Transportation, about 85 million passengers flew through the security checkpoints at its 152 airports in November 2018, a 3.7 percent increase from November 2017.
TSA officials are working to address how to better screen air travelers with more dogs and advanced X-ray equipment, the spokeswoman said.
A review of security procedures revealed plans to move those flights to a consolidated security center in Minnesota before moving them back to TSA’s primary security center in North Carolina in 2020. The consolidated center is expected to address security flow and be staffed with the right number of security personnel at the right times.