Air travel surged over the past week, when the number of US flights reached close to or more than a million passengers for six consecutive days. Transportation Security Administration figures show that nearly 9 million people have been screened at TSA checkpoints since the holiday climax began on December 18th.
Before Wednesday, the previous record for the pandemic was set on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
The increase in air travel is raising new concerns from health experts that there will be another spike in coronavirus infections, similar to the one recorded after Thanksgiving.
The rise in travel also comes as executives at several airlines are looking to bring back the thousands of workers who were laid off in the fall due to lower travel numbers.
