SEATAC, Wash. — Seattle-Tacoma International Airport fell just short of its single day record for outbound travelers last Friday, but expects that mark won’t last long this summer.
Last week, Sea-Tac sent out a warning that it projected a total of 196,000 people would be moving through the airport on Friday, June 23, including nearly 73,000 outbound travelers moving through security checkpoints.
When it was all said and done, the airport saw closer to 68,000 outbound travelers, falling shy of the record 72,154 single-day travelers that moved through checkpoints back in August of 2019. But as Sea-Tac warns, “at the pace folks are booking travel, the record will be broken this summer, maybe multiple times.”
That’s largely being driven by summer travel.
“It’s all about summer vacation,” SEA Senior Relations Manager Perry Cooper said. “As soon as schools are out we see the rush of traffic step up.”
With Tacoma and Seattle schools both now out, “that starts our busiest time of the year” between June and August, he added.
KIRO 7 spoke to travelers early Friday morning who reported being told by their airline to show up three and a half hours before their flight to account for wait times at security.
“We had to change some plans, update our Uber to get us here much earlier than we would have liked and get us out of bed,” traveler Carlene Lawhead said.
For reference, Sea-Tac saw over 170,000 total travelers on its busiest day over Memorial Day weekend this year. An estimated 162,000 passengers flew in and out of the airport on the busiest day of the Christmas travel season in 2022.
If you have travel plans at Sea-Tac this summer, the airport is urging travelers to reserve a spot in the TSA security line with the SEA Spot Saver app. The app also provides live updates on wait times at security checkpoints.
Trusted traveler programs like TSA PreCheck and CLEAR are cited as other alternatives for anyone looking to skip the lines.
Historically, the airport’s busiest times are between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m.