Record-breaking summer travel season ends with busy Labor Day weekend

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — If you flew somewhere this summer, you’re not alone! The TSA’s busiest travel days ever all happened over the last three and a half months.

“The travel demand has not really eased, and we’ve seen record-breaking crowds this summer again,” Clint Henderson, managing editor of The Points Guy, said.

The busiest travel day ever happened on the Sunday after the Fourth of July holiday this year, when more than 3 million people were screened by TSA.

“We’ve seen that demand stay really steady, despite the consumer now having traveled all they wanted to out of the pandemic,” Henderson said. “I think this is the new normal as far as leisure travel is concerned, and I think one thing that’s interesting that we’re watching is now the return of business travel, so you have this heightened leisure travel, and you’ve got business travelers coming back.”

The airport crowds continue as September kicks off with Labor Day travel expecting to break records. TSA expects to screen more than 17 million people in a week span around the holiday.

As for the fall, Henderson says “what we’ve seen is demand is so high that the peak demand seasons have stretched out,” but he says you can find deals right now, including flights and airfare to Las Vegas, plane tickets to California and flight prices to Europe.

If you have an itch to fly to Hawaii, Henderson says the fall may be a good time to snag a deal.

“Hawaii has become a much better deal out of the pandemic, demand there was insane,” Henderson said. “Prices were insane, but we’re now seeing routinely airfare under $300 for places like Maui, and even hotels, which are outrageously priced in Hawaii, have started to moderate somewhat.”

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it.

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description.

Copyright 2024 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.