Flying over Memorial Day weekend? Give yourself plenty of time for holiday crowds.

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials are expecting big crowds over the Memorial Day weekend, and are warning travelers to arrive early to give themselves enough time to get through security and make their flights.

Spokesperson Sam Haynes said she expects 33,000 people to fly out Friday — close to the record highest passenger day when 35,000 people flew out after Formula 1 racing last October. A high volume is anticipated again on Tuesday as tourists leave the city after the holiday. This weekend kicks off what is expected to be a record-breaking summer season as air travel rebounds from the pandemic.

Already struggling to deal with an increase in passengers over the spring, airport staff recently advised anyone flying out of Austin to show up 2½ hours before boarding domestic flights and three hours before international flights. That adds 30 minutes to the airport's previous advice, which was for passengers to arrive two hours before boarding domestic flights.

More: Still struggling to keep up, Austin airport tells travelers to arrive 2.5 hours before flights

The airport extended the recommendation to 2½ hours because of ongoing Transportation Security Administration staffing shortages and high volumes of expected summer travelers, Haynes said last week.

The increased wait time recommendation is the latest indication that the airport is still struggling with capacity, even after the TSA dispatched 15 additional officers to the airport in April in a bid to decrease security wait times for passengers.

Airport officials said the additional staffers helped keep security lines from spilling outside the main terminal for a few weeks, but security lines once again extended outside the terminal several times in recent weeks. Haynes said it is hard for airport staff to predict when lines will reach outside the building.

Testifying before Congress last week, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said an additional 11 officers will be stationed in Austin starting Memorial Day weekend. Haynes could not confirm whether these additional staff had arrived. The TSA did not respond to a request for comment by deadline, but ​​TSA Spokesperson Patricia Mancha told the Statesman in April that the agency works continuously with local airports to address staffing needs.

The airport’s website notes that “high passenger” days are days with 26,000 to 30,000 or more people flying out of the facility. The airport expects to serve a record-breaking 20 million passengers in 2022 — the airport was most recently expanded in 2019 to accommodate 15 million passengers a year.

More: Additional TSA agents are in place at Austin's airport; is that helping ease wait times?

Part of this increase stems from additional available flights. The airport expects 30% more seats will be available on flights out of Austin-Bergstrom this summer compared with the summer of 2019, which was the busiest year to date, Haynes said.

“It's just going to be kind of a steady cadence of business and we’re projecting that out through the summer,” Haynes said. “Summer is the busiest extended period of time for the Austin airport and this year is not going to be an exception. It's definitely going to be busy, pretty much consistently, until the end of August.”

Haynes urged passengers to give themselves plenty of time to park or be dropped off at the terminal, check bags and get through security. She said passengers flying on Allegiant or Frontier airlines, which fly out of the South Terminal, should park on site if they can, instead of shuttling over.

Haynes said the airport is consistently crowded at this point and staff no longer identifies certain days as peak travel days. However, she said many flights leave early in the mornings and passengers often find the biggest crowds before 8 a.m. Anxious travelers can avoid morning flights to skip the longest lines, she said.

Haynes also said passengers should pack carefully, starting with an empty bag, to avoid including items that will cause delays at security.

“When somebody is bringing something that's not allowed to the TSA that holds them up, but it also holds all the passengers behind them,” she said. “Visit the TSA website to ensure that you're not accidentally bringing something into your carry-on that will flag for security.”

More: 6 things you should know about Austin’s airport, which is getting busier these days

Haynes said the airport has taken steps to improve the passenger experience. In addition to working with the TSA to increase staffing, she said local airport staff are often deployed to the atrium in the mornings to direct lines so TSA agents can focus on the check points.

Longer-term solutions to airport expansion also are in development, including improving the baggage handling system, which should start this summer, as well as a plan to build out the atrium in the main terminal to expand security and add more ticket counters.

“We are in a new era of this airport, a new era of air travel. There's positives, like more international flights, more destinations, domestic for nonstop, but the trade off is that there's more people flying, and that means longer lines,” she said. “If you're someone that traveled a lot before the pandemic, you're so used to an Austin airport experience where you can arrive an hour or 45 minutes before your flight and just hop on your aircraft. Those days are gone.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Airport staff expect big crowds this Memorial Day, advise arriving early