TSA Screens Over 1 Million Passengers For First Time Since March

SEATTLE — On Sunday, TSA agents screened more than 1 million passengers, the highest number of airline passengers the country had seen since March 17, in the early stages of the pandemic.

Data from TSA checkpoints show that agents clocked a total of 1,031,505 passengers Sunday, up from just 788,743 the day before, but still a far cry from pre-pandemic levels. On October 19, 2019, TSA agents screened 2,606,266 passengers in America, meaning the country saw roughly 39.5 percent of the traffic it had the year before.

Still, the TSA says it's an encouraging sign. Over the past week the agency screened a total of 6.1 million passengers at checkpoints nationwide— also the highest weekly volume of passengers since the pandemic began. TSA credits the improvement to the combined efforts of their agency, airlines and airports to make travel safer during the coronavirus pandemic.

“TSA has been diligent in our efforts to ensure checkpoints are clean, safe and healthy for frontline workers and airline passengers, implementing new protocols and deploying state-of-the-art technologies that improve security and reduce physical contact,” said TSA Administrator David Pekoske in a statement.

Here in Washington, the numbers tell a similar story. While Sea-Tac Airport has not released travel statistics for Sunday the 18th, data from the week of Oct 11th shows the airport had an average daily passenger volume of 19,600— about 35 percent of the passengers the airport saw for the same week in 2019. On good days, the airport says they've seen up to 23,000 passengers, but that overall traffic remains about 30 to 35 percent of normal.

While that is a significant drop in ridership and not quite up to par with the rest of the nation, it is encouraging news for Sea-Tac: airport officials say near the start of the pandemic they had as few as 2,500 passengers per day, and at one point in March, Sea-Tac announced they had seen their lowest passenger count since 1976.