As pandemic restrictions ease across the country, airports are anticipating an uptick in travel ahead of the holiday weekend.

At DFW Airport, passenger traffic is returning to more than 80% of the 2019 summer travel levels. According to Bill Begley, Senior Manager of External Affairs at the airport, up to 200,000 passengers are traveling through DFW Airport each day.

On Thursday, Jefferey Smith drove his two sons from Shreveport, Louisiana to DFW Airport. His teenage sons were flying to California and traveling alone for the first time.

“Also, first time traveling since COVID, I prefer a non-stop flight for them, so they didn’t have to worry about the connections and all of those things,” Smith said.

Prosper resident Mandy Goddard and her family were flying out of the country Thursday for a long-awaited vacation, which was put on hold due to the pandemic.

“We’re going to spend time in Amsterdam first, then we’re going to Athens and getting on a cruise ship,” Goddard said. “This is phenomenal. It’s so invigorating to be able to get out and travel.”

Dallas Love Field officials are also expecting a busy travel period this upcoming weekend. Chris Perry, external communications manager for Dallas Love Field Airport, said recent travel has been comparable to pre-pandemic levels.

“We’re going to do somewhere between 90 to 95 percent of the travel we did in 2019,” Perry said. “It’s one of the indicators that travel is going to return more quickly than it was originally thought through the COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the TSA, everyone who is in an airport is required to wear a mask as prescribed by the federal mask mandate. This means that all travelers must be wearing a mask at TSA airport screening checkpoints, throughout the airport and during their flights.

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