This week’s TSA checkpoint contract is clean and measurable:

Will the weekly average TSA airport screenings (Jan 5–11) come in above 2.15 million?

At first glance, it looks like a simple travel question.

But the real edge is understanding the math of the week—because a seven-day average can swing hard based on what happens the next three days.

I’m writing this the night of 8 January,

But so far this week…

That gives us 6,350,343/day.

That’s a running 3-day average of 2,116,781/day.

So we’re below the 2.15M line right now.

Not by a mile, but enough that the back half of the week has to do real work.

In order to hit a daily average of 2.15 million, that means the next 4 days have to be pretty spectacular.

January isn’t normal and that’s great because in the next four days we need (Jan 8–11):
15,050,000 − 6,350,343 = 8,699,657

Or 2,174,914 per day.

(TSA checkpoint totals are typically updated Monday–Friday by 9 a.m., though holiday weeks can be delayed. I don’t have access to 8 January yet).

Point is, here’s why January isn’t “normal”…

School and university restart timing.

Most people talk about “post-holiday travel” as if it’s just people going on vacation.

Instead, Jan 5–11 is a collision between: (1) people squeezing in last-minute returns and (2) families and students snapping back to school schedules.

That calendar micro-timing can tilt weekend demand enough to make or break a 2.15M line.

Simple fundamentals, right?

Not so fast…

The deeper isn’t just on the “demand” side, but what other factors no one thinks to ask that could disrupt travel.

TSA prints are not a pure demand signal—they’re demand after the system absorbs friction.

If one major hub (ATL, ORD, DFW, DEN, plus the coastal monsters) loses even 10–15% of departures for a day, the national checkpoint total can come in light even though underlying demand never changed.

That’s why a “weak” ~2.05M day can still imply something like 2.2M clean-weather demand.

And right now, the lack of any major hub-disrupting storms indicates there doesn’t seem to be major disruptions to TSA flow.

Moreover, the other question almost no one asks is how many seats are actually scheduled to fly Thu–Sun, and where?

From there, you can start to answer the real question: are we actually set up to beat that 2.15 million line, or not?

The clean way to check is through airline schedule and seat‑capacity datasets (OAG, Cirium, BTS T‑100, etc.), which show whether this week’s domestic capacity profile is flat, up, or down versus last year.

Layer on school and university restart timing—who’s already back in session, who isn’t, and whether this weekend is a “last chance” getaway or a dead zone—and you’ve basically mapped the levers that decide whether 2.15M ends up a miss, a squeak‑through, or a clean clear

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