Thanksgiving is one of the busiest weeks of the year for air travel in the United States. Families fly to see each other, students head home and many people travel for a long weekend. The numbers are public, and the two agencies that publish most of them are the Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers, and the Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the air traffic system.
This guide uses only the figures those agencies publish. It shows the pattern from the most recent full Thanksgiving week we could check, explains what the numbers count, and sets out the 2026 dates. It ends with the holiday event planned for Short Final.
What TSA counts
TSA publishes daily checkpoint travel numbers for the country as a whole. These are counts of the people who pass through TSA security checkpoints on a given day. A traveller who passes a checkpoint on the way out and again on the way back is counted each time, so the number is not a count of different people. It is also a count of checkpoint activity, not of flights.
The FAA publishes a different measure. Its Air Traffic By the Numbers page gives the typical daily volume of its whole system, in flights and in airline passengers. That is an average for a normal day, not a holiday, and this guide does not quote its figures because they change from year to year.
The Thanksgiving week of 2025
TSA's 2025 passenger volume page lists the checkpoint numbers day by day. The Thanksgiving week of 2025 ran from Wednesday 26 November to Monday 1 December. Rounded to the nearest hundred thousand, the numbers were these.
| Day | Date | TSA checkpoint numbers (rounded) |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday | 26 November 2025 | about 2.8 million |
| Thursday, Thanksgiving Day | 27 November 2025 | about 1.6 million |
| Friday | 28 November 2025 | about 2.4 million |
| Saturday | 29 November 2025 | about 2.7 million |
| Sunday | 30 November 2025 | more than 3.1 million |
| Monday | 1 December 2025 | about 2.9 million |
The pattern is clearest when you set the Sunday and Monday against Thursday. The Sunday after Thanksgiving had the highest figure on TSA's 2025 page, at more than 3.1 million. The Monday after it was also high, and the Thanksgiving Day itself was the quietest day of that week, at about 1.6 million. TSA: passenger volumes for 2025
The page does not describe the Sunday as a record, and we have not described it that way. It is the highest figure listed for 2025, which is what the page shows.
Why the Sunday is busy
The shape of the week in the table is easy to see. The Wednesday before the holiday is busy, Thanksgiving Day itself is the quietest day at the checkpoints, and the weekend after it carries the return traffic on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
That is the usual shape. The exact numbers change every year with the calendar, the price of tickets and the weather, so a new year may show a different pattern in its details.
What the FAA numbers mean on a holiday
The FAA's daily figures tell you how big the whole system is. On a holiday week, the system has to handle more flights than usual on the busiest days, and that is where the controller's job gets harder. The sequencing, the holds and the flow management that the other guides in this series describe are all busier.
On the busiest days, the same tools the other guides describe carry more of the load: arrivals are sequenced, aircraft may be held, and flow management can keep flights on the ground for a while when the destination airport cannot take them.
Two different counts
The TSA and the FAA measure different things, so their figures cannot be added together or compared line for line. TSA counts people at security checkpoints. The FAA counts flights and airline passengers across its system. A busy checkpoint day tells you about the people passing through security. A busy system day tells you about the flights in the air. Both matter on a holiday.
When you read a news story about a busy travel day, check which agency it cites and what it counts. A figure from TSA is a checkpoint number. A figure from the FAA is a flight or airline passenger number. The two are not interchangeable, and mixing them can mislead a reader.
Thanksgiving 2026
Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November. In 2026 that is Thursday 26 November. The Sunday after it is Sunday 29 November, and the Wednesday before it is 25 November. If the 2025 pattern repeats, the busiest days of the holiday week will be around the Wednesday before and the Sunday after, with Thanksgiving Day itself quieter.
We do not forecast numbers. TSA publishes its own checkpoint figures for each day as they happen, and those are the figures to follow. The 2026 pages will fill in over the coming weeks.
Planning a trip
Travel advice changes, and the agencies publish their own. Check TSA's current guidance on what to bring and when to arrive, and check your airline's rules before you travel.
If you are flying through a large hub such as Atlanta, its map and runways are on our site, and you can see a busy airport's layout in the browser demo.
Thanksgiving in Short Final
Short Final has a planned holiday event called Thanksgiving Rush, which is part of version 3.4. The event is not in the game yet, and this guide does not depend on it.
Thanksgiving Rush is planned for version 3.4 and is not in the game yet. The event page says what is planned.
The event page on this site explains what is planned and when. Until the event is in the game, the game's ordinary traffic works as it always does. A busy airport in the game is still a busy airport, with real planes when the feed has them and simulated traffic to match your level.
What to remember
- TSA's checkpoint numbers count people passing through checkpoints, and a round trip is counted twice.
- On TSA's 2025 page, the Sunday after Thanksgiving had the highest figure, at more than 3.1 million.
- Thanksgiving Day was the quietest day of that week, at about 1.6 million.
- In 2026, Thanksgiving is Thursday 26 November, and the Sunday after is 29 November.
Sources
- TSA: passenger volumes
- TSA: passenger volumes for 2025
- FAA: Air Traffic By the Numbers
- FAA: Air Traffic Control handbook, JO 7110.65
Keep reading
- The world's busiest airports, by passengers: Atlanta tops the world's list of busiest airports by passengers in ACI World's 2025 results. Here are the 50 busiest, what the ranking counts, and why it is not the same as the number of planes.
- How air traffic control works: From pushback to touchdown, a flight passes through several controllers. Here is who they are, what each one does, and how they keep aircraft apart.
- Holding patterns: why planes circle: A holding pattern is a racetrack loop that keeps an aircraft in a known place while it waits for a landing slot. Here is how it works and why controllers use it.
- All guides