Sunday morning did not bring the typical post-Thanksgiving travel scene at LaGuardia Airport.  At Terminal B, nearly no cars were waiting for arriving travelers. Inside, few people passed through.

“Absolutely empty,” remarked Richard Garcia. “I think, I don’t know if it’s because of COVID or the time,” he said, noting it was not yet 8:30 a.m.

What You Need To Know

  • “Absolutely empty,” remarked Richard Garcia, who was catching a flight back to Florida after spending Thanksgiving in Queens

  • Travel volume nationwide recorded by the TSA offered some of the highest numbers since March

Garcia visited family in Queens over the holiday. He arrived through Newark Monday and says airport travel was more congested then. On Sunday, he was surprised how few people filled the airport.

Aviva Hirsch was also expecting to see more people at the terminal. The healthcare worker who lives in Manhattan returned from Chicago after visiting family for Thanksgiving.

“We do a lot of COVID testing and there were so many people coming in to get tested before the holidays to go home, I anticipated it would be a lot more busy with a lot more people traveling but it seems like it’s not for some reason,” she said.

While quiet at LaGuardia Sunday morning, travel nationwide this holiday season set pandemic records. On three separate days in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, the TSA counted more than one million travelers passing through a checkpoint. Those are some of the highest travel numbers since March.

Still, travel volume during the holiday week hovered around 35 to 40 percent of typical pre-pandemic volume. On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the TSA counted more than 1 million travelers; on the same day last year, there were more than 2.6 million. 

“It’s just a little stressful because there’s a lot of people,” said Angelina Araya, who compared Sunday’s flight experience to traveling in August when she says she crossed paths with even fewer people in the airport. The Queens native returned home Sunday from Portland where she is a freshman in college. She also had a stop in Richmond. 

Araya says she got a coronavirus test before arriving in the city and plans to get a second at the airport.

The city stepped up enforcement over the holiday. Travelers from state’s not bordering New York must prove a negative COVID-19 test before arriving and a second one after arrival; otherwise, there’s a mandatory 14-day quarantine and fines for not complying.

“Regardless I’m still planning on staying at home and, like, quarantining just to be sure in the event I do develop some symptoms, so yeah, for the safety of others,” Araya said.