Sea-Tac Airport Traffic Stays Light Over Thanksgiving Week

SEATTLE — The holiday rush in Washington appeared to be subdued over Thanksgiving week, amid repeated calls from state leaders and health officials to avoid unnecessary travel and keep celebrations small and within the household.

The latest figures available from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport show the week of Nov. 22 - 29 logged roughly 18,000 people traveling through security checkpoints each day, down about 65 percent compared to the same time in 2019. In fact, the average over the holiday week was slightly lower than the week before.

Across the United States, Sunday was the busiest day for air travel since the pandemic began, with more than 1 million Americans heading home, according to TSA estimates. CNN reports that figure is 41 percent the number recorded in 2019, but more than 9 million took flight throughout the Thanksgiving "travel window," beginning the Friday before the holiday.

In the Seattle region, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is usually the busiest travel day of the week, followed by the Sunday and Monday after the holiday. However, Thanksgiving is not one of the airport's most crowded weeks, even in normal times.

"This is not typically the busiest time of the year for SEA, it's the summer months June through August," said Perry Cooper, media relations manager for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. "Other airports see the busiest times as the holidays as they have many more connecting passengers than we do, i.e. LAX, Denver, Chicago, etc."

According to Cooper, the busiest air travel stretch of the pandemic to date occurred between Oct. 11 and Oct. 18, coinciding with Indigenous Peoples' Day.