TSA statistics: passengers, firearms, staffing and more

How many people the TSA screens

TSA publishes daily checkpoint counts, not an annual table. The totals below are those daily counts summed by calendar year — 2025 set the all-time record, edging 2024 by 0.3%, and 2026 is running 0.4% ahead of the same window last year.

Source: summed from TSA's official daily checkpoint counts at tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes. 2026 YTD covers Jan 1 – Jul 1 (182 days); first-half averages always trail full-year figures.

Record days: every 3-million-passenger day ever

Only ten days in TSA history have topped three million screened — and eight of them were Sundays. The record, 3,134,613 on Sunday, November 30, 2025 (the Sunday after Thanksgiving), stands despite that year's government-shutdown flight cuts. 2026 hasn't produced a 3M day yet; its peak so far is 2,988,204 on June 18.

Weekly rhythm (full-year 2025 averages): Sunday — 2,736,967 avg passengers in 2025; 8 of the 10 all-time record days were Sundays. Quietest: Tuesday — 2,163,030 avg passengers in 2025, about 21% below Sunday. If your dates are flexible, that Sunday-to-Tuesday gap is the single easiest crowd you can dodge — see the cheapest day to fly for the fare side of the same pattern.

Firearms intercepted at checkpoints, by year

TSA officers found 6,678 firearms in 2024 — about 18.2 per day, 94% of them loaded — the first annual decrease since 2020. The all-time record is 6,737 in 2023. TSA had not published a full-year 2025 total as of July 2026, so this series ends at 2024.

Where they're found: in 2024 Atlanta (ATL) led the nation with 440 firearms — its ninth consecutive year at #1 — followed by Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) with 390, Houston Bush (IAH) with 272, Phoenix (PHX) with 247, and Nashville (BNA) with 188. Bringing a firearm to a checkpoint carries a civil penalty of up to $17,062 plus loss of PreCheck eligibility for at least five years — packing rules are in what you can bring through security.

Workforce, budget, and footprint

The agency behind those volumes, in one table. Periods vary by row because TSA discloses these figures in different documents — each is stated with its figure.

Wait times: the standard vs. what we measure

TSA's standing service standard is under 30 minutes in standard lanes and under 10 minutes in PreCheck lanes. The agency publishes no national "% under 30 minutes" statistic for standard lanes — only the benchmark — which is the gap this site exists to fill.

Our own forecasting model — the same one that powers the live site — puts the typical-day national average standard-lane wait at about 19 minutes across the 32 large U.S. airports we cover, with a double-hump daily shape: quietest around 5–6 AM (10 minutes), peaking near 30 minutes at 6 PM with a matching morning peak at 8–9 AM. These are first-party modeled estimates, not TSA measurements — the full method note is below. Check the live number for your airport on its hub page — Atlanta (ATL), Los Angeles (LAX), or the full airport directory.

Method note: All wait figures are FIRST-PARTY MODELED ESTIMATES produced by tsawaittimes.app’s own forecasting model (the same Tier-B model that powers the live site), computed 2026-07-03 for the launch set of 32 large U.S. airports. They are not TSA or government measurements. For this snapshot every airport was computed via the model’s deterministic typical-day curve (an overnight lull with ~8 AM and ~6 PM peaks) scaled per airport, clamped to 4–75 minutes; the flight-schedule-density input was unavailable at run time. The national hour-by-hour shape is the model’s real typical-day curve, but per-airport differences come from the model’s seeded scaling — treat per-airport rows as “our model’s typical-day estimate,” never as a measured ranking of airports. Averages weight operating hours (4 AM–10 PM) at 1.0 and overnight hours at 0.25. Standard lanes only; 11 of the 32 airports also have live Tier-A checkpoint feeds (marked “live”). No day-of-week or seasonal term is included. Values rounded to whole minutes.

TSA PreCheck and expedited screening

PreCheck is the other half of the wait-time story: TSA's 99% under-10-minutes claim applies to PreCheck lanes only.

Deciding between the programs? See PreCheck vs CLEAR vs Global Entry — and whichever lane you use, work backward from the wait with how early to arrive at the airport.

REAL ID: where enforcement stands

REAL ID full enforcement began May 7, 2025. Compliance was 93% two weeks in and passed 94% by December 2025. Since February 1, 2026, travelers without an acceptable ID can pay a $45 TSA ConfirmID fee, valid for a 10-day travel period, to be identity-verified at the checkpoint instead.

How many passengers does the TSA screen per day?

The TSA screened an average of 2,484,208 passengers per day in 2025 — 906,735,976 for the full year, an all-time annual record. The single busiest day in TSA history was Sunday, November 30, 2025 (the Sunday after Thanksgiving), when 3,134,613 people were screened. Sundays are consistently the busiest day of the week, and Tuesdays the quietest.

How many guns does the TSA find at checkpoints?

TSA officers intercepted 6,678 firearms at airport checkpoints in 2024 — about 18.2 per day across 277 airports, and 94% of them were loaded. That was the first annual decrease since 2020; the all-time record is 6,737 in 2023. Atlanta (ATL) led the nation with 440 firearms in 2024, its ninth consecutive year at #1.

How many employees does the TSA have?

The TSA has nearly 65,000 employees, including roughly 50,000 Transportation Security Officers, screening passengers at nearly 440 airports. As of June 2024 that footprint covered 685 security checkpoints and 2,412 screening lanes. The agency requested an $11.8 billion budget for FY2025.

What is the TSA's wait time standard?

TSA's standing service standard is under 30 minutes in standard lanes and under 10 minutes in TSA PreCheck lanes. TSA states that 99% of PreCheck passengers wait less than 10 minutes; it publishes no equivalent percentage for standard lanes. tsawaittimes.app's own forecasting model puts the typical-day national average standard-lane wait across 32 large U.S. airports at about 19 minutes — a modeled estimate, not a TSA measurement.

Cite or share this data

Citation line: Source: tsawaittimes.app — TSA statistics: passengers, firearms, staffing and more, 2026. The charts and tables on this page are free to republish under CC BY 4.0 — just link back to this page. Third-party figures (TSA, DHS, congressional testimony) remain attributed to their original publishers, listed in the sources below; our modeled wait figures should be credited as tsawaittimes.app model estimates.