More than 3 million travelers screened at US airports in a single day; that's a record

Travelers heading home after the Thanksgiving holiday set a record on Sunday, as airport officers screened more than 3 million people.

The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it handled 3.09 million travelers, breaking the previous record by about 74,000. That mark was set on July 7, also a Sunday after a holiday.

Hundreds of thousands of travelers were delayed or had their flights canceled. Airlines canceled about 120 U.S. flights - not an unusually high number - and more than 6,800 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware. The largest numbers of delays were at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.


The TSA had predicted that Thanksgiving week air travel would rise 6% over the same days last year, fitting a pattern of record travel in 2024.