DIA saw half of the expected travelers during Thanksgiving week

DENVER ( KDVR ) — Denver International Airport was anticipating a busy holiday season, but numbers from Thanksgiving week dipped significantly lower than expected.

The Transportation Security Administration said this holiday season was expected to be their busiest ever . Within the year, TSA has recorded seven of the top 10 busiest travel days in TSA history.

With DIA being the third busiest airport in the world, Denver was ready for a crowd of people going through the airport for the holiday.

DIA said more than 785,000 passengers were expected to travel through TSA checkpoints from Nov. 17 through Nov. 27, a 13% increase from this time last year.

But come Thanksgiving week, the airport was quieter than usual.

DIA shared the expected and actual number of passengers that traveled through TSA checkpoints.

Wednesday, Nov. 22

Forecast: 270,000

Actual: 76,359

Thursday, Nov. 23

Forecast: 162,000

Actual: 36,645

Friday, Nov. 24

Forecast: 253,000

Actual: 52,328

Saturday, Nov. 25

Forecast: 222,000

Actual: 70,924

Sunday, Nov. 26

Forecast: 276,000

Actual: hasn’t been released

TSA projected that more than 489,000 travelers were expected to pass through DIA between Monday, Nov. 20 to Sunday, Nov. 26.

In reality, only 236,256 people passed through the airport from Nov. 22 to Nov. 25.

The predicted number of travelers resulted in over 50% less than expected.

Even though DIA wasn’t as busy as expected, TSA announced that Sunday set an agency-wide record for the busiest air travel day ever with more than 2.9 million people screened at airports across the United States.

FOX31 reached out to TSA on why the numbers were so low this year but hasn’t received a response yet.