United Airlines expects busiest travel day since start of COVID this Thanksgiving

United Airlines said Wednesday it expects to carry 5.5m passengers during the Thanksgiving travel period, up about 12% over 2021. The US carrier will operate more than 3,700 flights per day on average during the Nov. 18-30 period. United forecasts it will carry about as many passengers over the holiday as the pre-pandemic period in 2019. United also predicts Nov. 27 -- the Sunday after Thanksgiving -- will be its busiest travel day since before the pandemic with more than 460,000 passengers. United said it had added about 275 extra flights on Sunday to help accommodate this peak demand. The Transportation Security Administration said in the week ending Tuesday it screened 14.9m people, down slightly from the 15.3m people screened in the same period in 2019. The Transportation Department said Monday that US August air passenger traffic was still down 8.6% over pre-pandemic levels -- 76.6m passengers versus 83.8m in August 2019.<br/>