Millions of people couldn’t travel over the Thanksgiving weekend because of bad weather. It could have been a record-breaking weekend for air travel.
The Transportation Security Administration said it would check more than 3 million people on Sunday, which is usually the busiest day for travel over Thanksgiving weekend. It could have been the busiest day ever. At the moment, the daily record is 3,013,622.
The amount of passengers on Sunday is set to be made public on Monday morning. The TSA said that just over 2.8 million people went through U.S. airports on Saturday, making it the busiest holiday day so far.
The National Weather Service said that “dangerous travel conditions near the Great Lakes” were caused by an arctic blast that moved through the northern Plains and the Midwest over the weekend. The weather service said on Sunday that heavy lake-effect snow would last all day and into Monday.
Based on data from FlightAware, 6,274 planes to, from, or within the U.S. were late on Sunday, and 119 flights were cancelled. As of Saturday, there were 6,670 delays and 82 cancellations. About 20% of flights leaving or landing at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport were late on Sunday.
FlightAware says that just under 20% of flights for United Airlines (UAL 0.50%), Delta Air Lines (DAL 0.31%), and American Airlines (AAL -0.82%) were delayed on Sunday. This is a little less than the 20% of flights that were delayed on Saturday. As of 5 a.m. Eastern Time Monday, about 300 planes were late and 40 were cancelled.
A lot of people were affected by the delays and cancellations, but buyers didn’t seem to care. During early Monday trading, Delta, American, and United prices were mostly flat.
