TSA screens almost 39M travelers in 15 days over holidays

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said it screened almost 39 million passengers in about two weeks during the winter holidays, bringing the total to more than 900 million nationwide for 2024.

“For the entire year of 2024, TSA officers screened a record 904M individuals at airport checkpoints around the country,” the agency said in a Friday post on social platform X. The TSA added that it screened 39 million individuals from Dec. 19, 2024, to Jan. 2, 2025, calling it the agency's "busiest end of year holiday travel period ever."

The TSA said last month that it was expecting to screen nearly 40 million people between Dec. 19 and Jan. 2, nearly matching the actual number it shared Friday.

The record number of individuals who were screened at airports in the U.S. comes as the auto club AAA projected that around 119.3 million people were expected to travel 50 miles or more between Dec. 21 and Jan. 1, potentially representing a 3 million increase from 2023.

“This year, with Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday, we’re anticipating record-breaking travel numbers the weekend before and the weekend after the holiday,” AAA Travel Services Vice President Stacey Barber said in a statement at the time.

Air travel was projected by AAA to break the record this past holiday season with almost 7.9 million people, surpassing the previous record of 7.5 million last year.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske praised the agency’s employees and thanked the airlines and airports for their "continued partnership.”

“We closed out winter holiday travel with record-breaking numbers. I commend the @TSA workforce for their teamwork and vigilance in the midst of challenges they face each day,” he wrote in a Thursday post on X. “Thank you, #TeamTSA for an incredible job well done and thanks to our airport and airline partners for your continued partnership.”

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