Following a year of lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, airports are experiencing a surge in the amount of travelers as Americans begin to feel a little more comfortable with traveling again.
Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced via Twitter that the TSA had screened 1.4 million travelers the following day, marking the eighth consecutive day of screening over 1 million travelers.
The TSA “screened 1,407,223 people at security checkpoints yesterday, Thursday, March 18,” Farbstein tweeted, continuing to note that it “was the eighth consecutive day of checkpoint volume above 1M.”
JUST IN: @TSA screened 1,407,223 people at security checkpoints yesterday, Thursday, March 18. It was the eighth consecutive day of checkpoint volume above 1M. The last time throughput was this high was on March 15, 2020, when 1,519,192 people passed through TSA checkpoints.
— Lisa Farbstein, TSA Spokesperson (@TSA_Northeast) March 19, 2021
Farbstein also noted that the last time TSA checkpoints experienced this much volume with travelers was last year on March 15, 2020. (RELATED: Millions Of People Are Traveling Ahead Of Thanksgiving Despite COVID-19 Warning, TSA Data Shows)
As more and more Americans take the coronavirus vaccine, the new data released from the TSA suggests that many Americans are slightly more comfortable with traveling than they were at the start of the pandemic last year. Though, according to a NPR/Marist poll, while 45% of Americans are willing to take the vaccine, and 22% said they’d already been vaccinated, 30% of Americans said they would not get vaccinated.
According to data from a recent survey done by Morning Consult, while 26% of Americans are comfortable with flying on airlines and 17% are comfortable with taking international flights, 57% are more comfortable with taking road trips, while 39% are comfortable with renting a car.
A recent study done by Gallup showed that 60% of Americans believe that the coronavirus pandemic is getting better, with 26% believing that the pandemic was remaining the same, while 14% believed that the pandemic was worsening.
The Biden Administration in January was reportedly looking into implementing measures such as mandatory COVID-19 testing for flights within the United States.
The TSA announced in early February that travelers who refused to wear masks could be subject to fines anywhere between $250 to $1500.
Many major airlines such as Delta, American, and United have previously adopted policies requiring passengers to wear masks while onboard flights.