Hartsfield-Jackson sets one-day security screening record: 92,421 passengers

ajc.com

Credit: Kelly Yamanouchi

Credit: Kelly Yamanouchi

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport had a record 92,421 passengers going through security checkpoints on the Friday before the 4th of July.

The airport said security wait times were less than 30 minutes throughout the day -- an improvement from last year when the lines were sometimes an hour long.

Some wait times were longer than 20 minutes. About 95 percent of passengers in regular lines had waits of 20 minutes or less. Those in PreCheck lines waited less than five minutes, according to the airport, citing TSA figures.

The previous record was set on the Friday before Memorial Day of this year, when 90,068 passengers went through security at the world's busiest airport. The third-highest in history at the Atlanta airport was Friday March 31, with 85,516 passengers going through security.

The number of passengers going through security checkpoints does not include most passengers who are only connecting through Atlanta. Hartsfield-Jackson handles more than 280,000 passengers a day, including connecting passengers.

Hartsfield-Jackson, the world's busiest airport, handled more than 104 million passengers last year.

This year, traffic has been volatile. While passenger counts were on the upswing in January and March, they declined 4.2 percent year-over-year for April, when a Delta Air Lines meltdown led to more than 3,000 flight cancellations over five days. Passenger counts declined slightly in February and were down 0.8 percent in May compared with the same month in 2016, according to airport statistics.

For the first five months of the year combined, passenger counts at the Atlanta airport are now at 0.09 percent below the same period of 2016. That includes a nearly 5 percent increase in international passenger counts and a 0.7 percent decline in domestic passenger counts. International passengers make up about 11.4 percent of the total at Hartsfield-Jackson.

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PreCheck an option to tackle long security lines On the Friday before the 4th of July, Hartsfield-Jackson set a record for passengers going through security checkpoints.