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Record summer: TSA's 9 busiest days ever have all come since May
Zach Wichter
Aviation Industry Reporter
Zach has been interested in things that go since he was a kid. He previously worked at The New York Times and spent much of his time there covering the aviation industry, including contributing to the paper’s reporting on the 737 Max crisis at Boeing. He grew up in Bethpage, on Long Island, and graduated from Northwestern University in 2013 where he majored in journalism and gender and sexuality studies.
Sept. 06, 2019
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2 min read
Record summer: TSA's 9 busiest days ever have all come since May
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Summer is unofficially over, and the Transportation Security Administration has taken the opportunity to take stock of the travel season that closed out.
The agency said it screened more passengers than ever — 262 million — between the Wednesday before Memorial Day and the Tuesday after Labor Day. It also screened 164 million bags in the same period.
The TSA said that period included nine of the 10 busiest days in its history for screenings.
On July 7, TSA agents screened almost 2.8 million passengers, making it the busiest day in the agency's history.
Related: The Best Credit Cards for Airline Lounge Access
Over the course of the summer, nearly all passengers waited less than 30 minutes in regular screening lines, and less than 10 minutes in PreCheck lines, according to the TSA's statement.
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The ten busiest days for passenger screening in TSA history are:
- July 7, 2019 (2,795,369 passengers screened)
- May 24, 2019 (2,792,670)
- July 19, 2019 (2,776,960)
- June 21, 2019 (2,772,903)
- July 8, 2019 (2,748,718)
- Aug. 1, 2019 (2,742,882)
- July 26, 2019 (2,732,770)
- Aug. 2, 2019 (2,730,936)
- June 28, 2019 (2,730,515)
- Nov. 25, 2018 (2,730,081)
Featured image by LightRocket via Getty Images
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