(NewsNation Now) — Despite worries about the omicron variant, the Transportation Security Administration reported screening more than 2 million passengers Sunday, the fourth straight day surpassing the mark.
At this time in 2020, the highest number screened in the period from Dec. 16 through Dec. 19 was 1,073,563, on Dec. 18. This year, the top number of passengers wending their way through the checkpoints was 2,233,754 on Dec. 17. This was still a bit short of the highest volume for the holiday season, which came on Nov. 28 when just over 2.4 million passengers took off their shoes and emptied their pockets for screening.
While the new numbers show a return to nearly normal, they’re still 300,000 to 500,000 shy of the 2019 pre-pandemic totals, depending on the day.
Despite continuing staffing challenges both on the ground and in the air, there were no reports of the kinds of massive flight delays experienced earlier in the season. In testimony before Congress last week, the CEOs of the four largest U.S. airlines, American, United, Southwest and Delta, said they were still having trouble staffing up to pre-pandemic levels despite tens of billions of federal dollars in PPP loans and other programs meant to help them keep employees on the books.
Another factor is the unwillingness of many employees to pick up extra shifts due to a perceived danger of exposure to COVID-19 while working in customer-facing jobs.
For now, though, the skies are more or less friendly. Even Mother Nature, infamous for snarling Christmastime travel, looks to be behaving beyond a winter storm headed for the West Coast midweek.