(NewsNation) — There was no shortage of viral videos showing unruly behavior on flights last year but overall there were fewer incidents in 2023 compared to the year before, according to FAA data.
After surging to nearly 6,000 in 2021, the number of unruly passenger reports fell in 2022 to less than half at 2,455. As of Dec. 17, 2023, the number of incidents reported by airline crews to the FAA had further dropped to 1,987.
Despite the shrinking number, last year’s tally is still nearly double the number of unruly passenger incidents reported in 2019 before the pandemic.
The 2023 decline came even as air travel picked up. As of late December, the number of travelers going through U.S. airport checkpoints was up 12.4% over 2022 and 1.4% higher than in 2019, according to the TSA.
The American Automobile Association (AAA) predicted that more than 115 million people would travel this holiday season, the second-highest forecast since 2000. While most of those people chose to drive to their destinations, airport security checkpoints saw hundreds of thousands more people than last year.
For the weekend heading into the New Year’s holiday, TSA screened more than 2.6 million passengers, up from 2.4 million in 2022 and 2.3 million in 2019.
So far, those crowds haven’t led to widespread disruptions of the sort seen in recent years.