Atlanta airport ready for busy holiday travel weekend

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - We’re heading into Memorial Day weekend, which starts the busy travel season.

Airport officials say they expect over 2 million people to be traveling through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport this weekend. It is going to be the busiest airport in the entire country. Projections show more than 350,000 people are expected to pass through Atlanta’s airport on Friday alone.

“We are projecting 99,000 people to be screened as they’re departing from Atlanta. Why anyone would want to leave Atlanta, I don’t know, but that is approaching the number we saw on our busiest screening day which was the day after the Super Bowl back in 2019,” said Andrew Gobeil, the airport’s director of communications and public affairs.

Across the country, 3.4 million Americans are expected to be flying. TSA has additional agents working Friday so that they can handle the influx of passengers.

Many people flying tell Atlanta News First they made sure to get to the airport extra early to make their flights on time.

“Three hours. I know security lines have been crazy, so I wanted to get here early,” said Amaya Baker, who’s flying to St. Louis.

“We heard it might be a little crazy so we thought let’s just go. We got to sit somewhere, let’s sit at the airport,” said Terry Flynn, who’s flying to Las Vegas.

The high volume of air travelers at the Atlanta airport is expected to last through Wednesday.

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