Tens Of Thousands Of Passengers Traveling Through LAX This Christmas Eve

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Tens of thousands of passengers traveled through Los Angeles International Airport on Christmas Eve.

KNX 1070's Jon Baird reports airport officials said over the last two weeks of the year, 2.6 million passengers were traveling through LAX — that's 8 percent, or about 200,000 more than in 2012.

"Today is going to be a light day, but as you can see it's very busy behind me," LAX spokesperson Amanda Parsons said. "Today we are expecting less than 200,000. Our busiest days have 200,000 and above passengers coming through the airport."

TSA official Nico Melendez said the main issue that causes delays is when passengers forget to remove prohibited items from carry-on baggage.

"Passengers just need to look through their bags before they come to the airport, be it knives, scissors, and in some cases, loaded handguns are coming to the checkpoint," he said. "So take a look in your bags before you come here. You're traveling for the holidays, the last thing we want you to do is spend the night in jail because you forgot to take your gun out of your bag."

More than 2,000 guns have been confiscated at airports this year nationwide.