Thanksgiving travel rush kicks into high gear
MIAMI – The eve of Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel days of the year.
AAA predicts that 54.6 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home in the U.S. this week, a 1.5% bump over Thanksgiving last year and only 2% less than in 2019. The auto club says nearly 49 million of those will travel by car, and 4.5 million will fly between Wednesday and Sunday.
Remember all those flight cancellations and delays we had over the summer? You don’t have to worry as much about that for the holiday.
Experts say weather and low staffing blindsided the airline industry months ago. Since then, they have been aggressively hiring and adjusting schedules to make sure they are more reliable.
“We did have a challenging summer,” said Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president at the trade group Airlines for America..
She said that airlines have pared their schedules and hired thousands of workers, they now have more pilots than before the pandemic.
“As a result, we’re confident that the week is going to go well,” said Pinkerton.
U.S. airlines plan to operate 13% fewer flights this week than during Thanksgiving week in 2019. However, by using larger planes on average, the number of seats will drop only 2%, according to data from travel-researcher Cirium.
Airlines continue to blame flight disruptions on shortages of air traffic controllers, especially in Florida, a major holiday destination.
Controllers, who work for the Federal Aviation Administration, “get tested around the holidays. That seems to be when we have challenges,” Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said a few days ago. “The FAA is adding another 10% to headcount, hopefully, that’s enough.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has disputed such claims, saying that the vast majority of delays and cancellations are caused by the airlines themselves.
TSA expects airports to be busier than last year and probably about on par with 2019.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving will be the busiest holiday travel day.
For those traveling by air during peak times, have patience for long security lines and always have a backup plan incase the flight falls through.
People getting behind the wheel or boarding a plane don’t seem fazed by higher gasoline and airfare prices than last year or the widespread concern about inflation and the economy. That is already leading to predictions of strong travel over Christmas and New Year’s.
“This pent-up demand for travel is still a real thing. It doesn’t feel like it’s going away,” says Tom Hall, a vice president and longtime writer for Lonely Planet, the publisher of travel guides. “That’s keeping planes full, that’s keeping prices high.”
