More people traveled by air in the United States the day before Thanksgiving than at any other point in the pandemic.

The Transportation Security Administration reported that 2,311,978 people were screened at U.S. airports Wednesday, topping the previous pandemic record of 2,242,956 set on Nov. 19.

Air travel on Thanksgiving Eve was up 116% from the 1,070,967 reported last year, when the threat of COVID-19 largely kept Americans home. The number of air travelers was still down 12% this year compared to 2019.

The new pandemic record could be short-lived, as the Sunday after Thanksgiving is generally the busiest day at airports around the holiday. 

Before Thursday, there had been seven consecutive days with at least 2 million airport customers, and Monday and Tuesday ranked among the top six most trafficked days since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

AAA projected that 53.4 million people would travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, up 13% from 2020. In 2019, 56 million people traveled for the holiday.

More than 47.1 million were expected to travel by car, and 4.2 million were expected to fly.

Thanksgiving Thursday, typically a quieter day for travel, saw 1,382,230 pass through airport checkpoints, according to a TSA spokesperson, more than doubling 2020's total, and just shy of travel figures on the same day in 2019.

"Historically, Thanksgiving sees low checkpoint volume because people are already at their holiday destinations," TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein wrote on Twitter. "Expect a significant increase by Sunday when people fly home."