Fasten your seatbelts; international travel is taking off at O'Hare International Airport.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is predicting the airport may exceed pre-pandemic passenger levels.

Since the beginning of the fiscal year, 1.73 million passengers have gone through O’Hare. Comparatively, for all of 2021, there were 2.21 million passengers, and in 2020 there were 2.71 million.

Officials are predicting that summer travel will push the number of passengers in 2022 to surpass pre-pandemic numbers of 6 million in 2022.

“Bottom line is the COVID restrictions are lifting, the mask requirements are lifting,” said LaFonda Sutton-Burke, director of field operations for the Chicago Field Office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “We have a low rate of infections that are occurring and more and more people are becoming more confident and comfortable in travel.”