The official holiday travel period started Friday and goes through the first week of the New Year, and Tampa International Airport officials are expecting almost a million travelers to pass through.
Airport spokeswoman Emily Nipps said that's about 5,000 to 10,000 more people than they see on an average day.
"We're definitely feeling the crunch from seeing this many people here,” Nipps said. We may hit our record numbers next year if our passenger numbers keep growing."
And with the holiday season comes gifts and leftovers, which people try to bring through security lines.
Nipps said for answers about carrying on pies, leftovers and unusual gifts, you can tweet to “@ AskTSA.”
"If anybody has any questions about what they can travel with during the holidays - because people do travel with unusual things during the holidays, we've seen - they can get on that twitter account and ask TSA and they've very, very good about answering pretty quickly,” Nipps said.
Nipps said because of the increased traffic and ongoing airport construction, travelers should arrive an hour earlier than they usually do and use cell phone lots when picking up passengers.
Construction obstructing drop-off and pick-off lines has been temporarily stopped to accommodate increased holiday traffic.
Overall airport construction is scheduled for completion in late 2017.
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