If you were among air travelers over the long Labor Day weekend, you were among 8.76 million travelers who had encounters with Transportation Security Administration screeners.
The TSA announced the figure Tuesday morning saying the millions of travelers were processed and screen between Friday, Sept. 2 and Monday, Sept. 5. The agency said the weekend travel volume represents 106% of volume for the same pre-pandemic holiday weekend in 2019,
It is also the first time that a holiday weekend passenger screening volume exceeded that of 2019 when 8.24 million passengers were screened by TSA. This past Friday marked the heaviest travel day with 2.48 million passengers screened at airports in Oklahoma and across the nation.
TSA also made the claim that over the weekend, 94.9% of TSA PreCheck passengers waited less than 5 minutes while 91.6% of those passengers in standard screening lanes waited less than 15 minutes.
During the weekend, Transportation Security Officers intercepted 67 firearms and prevented them from entering aircraft passenger cabins. On average, TSA stopped 17.3 firearms each day at checkpoints since the beginning of the year. If this pace continues, TSA anticipates that firearm catches at checkpoints will eclipse the current full year-record of 5,972 firearms intercepted at the nation’s checkpoints in 2021.