Thanksgiving Air Travel Breaks Pandemic Records

"Nearly 10 million people hopped on planes during the 10-day Thanksgiving period that ended Sunday, including four days with more than 1 million passengers and some of the busiest travel days of the COVID-19 era," reports Kyle Arnold.

"Still, some 1.18 million people traveled through TSA checkpoints on Sunday, the most since March, the agency reported Monday. A total of 9.4 million people went through TSA checkpoints between Nov. 20 and 29."

Those numbers seem like a lot in context of the pandemic, but they are 60 percent lower that the numbers from a year ago.

The numbers fall in line with the predictions listed in a recent blog post by Devin Partida, which noted that the high numbers relative to the pandemic norm, while still be low compared to the pre-pandemic norm, are kind of a lose-lose for the country. Less travel and tourism will have negative effects on the economy of most U.S. cities, but high travel numbers will have negative effects for the spread of the coronavirus.