Just as there’s a good chance the turkey will taste dry, airports and highways are expected to be crowded during Thanksgiving week, a holiday period likely to end with another record day for U.S. air travel. United.
The people responsible for maintaining security lines, boarding zones and the flow of airliners — from the U.S. Transportation Secretary to airline chiefs to airline chiefs — swear they are prepared for the crowds .
But one service workers strike at Charlotte Douglas International Airport threatens a hub in the Carolinas.
Airline passengers might get lucky, as they did last year, when relatively few flights were canceled during the holiday week. A repeat will require weather cooperation. And even if the skies are blue, a shortage of air traffic controllers could cause delays.
But a new round of winter weather could complicate travel through Thanksgiving, according to forecasts across the United States, while California and Washington state continue to recover storm damage and power outages.
Automobile club and insurance company AAA predicts that nearly 80 million Americans will venture at least 50 miles from home between next Tuesday and Monday. Most will travel by car.
Drivers should receive a slight discount on gas prices. The national average gas price was $3.06 per gallon on Sunday, compared to $3.27 at the same time last year.
The Transportation Security Administration plans to screen 18.3 million people at U.S. airports during the same seven-day period. This would be 6% higher than during the corresponding days last year, but would fit an established pattern throughout 2024.
“This will be the busiest Thanksgiving in terms of air travel,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said. “Fortunately, our numbers are also at their highest levels ever. We are ready.”
Pekoske said TSA will have enough screeners to keep general security lines under 30 minutes and lines for people who pay extra for PreCheck under 10 minutes.
Service workers at Charlotte Douglas International Airport have walked off the job to protest what they call unbearable wages.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport officials said this holiday travel season is expected to be the busiest on record, with about 1.02 million passengers leaving the airport between last Thursday and the Monday after Thanksgiving.
And a continuing shortage of air traffic controllers could lead to flight delays.
Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Mike Whitaker said last week that he expects his agency to use special measures to deal with shortages at some facilities. In the past, this included airports in New York and Florida.
“If we are short-staffed, we will slow traffic as necessary to keep the system safe,” Whitaker said.
The FAA has long struggled with a shortage of controllers that airline officials say will last for years, despite the agency’s ambitious recruiting goals.
Thanksgiving Day falls late this year, with the fourth Thursday in November falling on November 28. This shortens the traditional shopping season and changes the pace of holiday travel.
With more time before the holiday, people tend to spread their outbound trip over several days, but everyone returns at the same time, said Andrew Watterson, chief operating officer of Southwest Airlines.
“A late Thanksgiving leads to a big rush at the end – Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving are usually very busy with Thanksgiving this late,” Watterson said.
Airlines did a relatively good job of managing holiday crowds last year, when the weather was mild across most of the country. Fewer than 400 U.S. flights were canceled during Thanksgiving week in 2023, or about one in every 450 flights. So far in 2024, airlines have canceled about 1.3% of all flights.
The rise of remote work has also led to a longer Thanksgiving travel period, AAA spokeswoman Aixa Diaz said.
“The pandemic changed everything,” she said. “What we’ve seen is that after the pandemic, people are leaving at certain times, maybe even the weekend before Thanksgiving, working remotely from their destination for a few days, and then spending time with their loved ones.”
Thanksgiving nightmares of the past have further shaped holiday traffic jams. Motorists who learned to avoid traveling the day before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving created new bottlenecks on other days, according to Diaz.
“Because we had warned for so long (that) Wednesday and Sunday were the worst days to travel, people were saying, ‘OK, I’ll leave Tuesday and come back Monday to avoid the rush,'” she said. declared. “So now these two days are also crowded.”
Airport security officials are asking passengers to arrive early, not put lithium-ion batteries in their checked luggage in case they overheat, and to keep weapons away from carry-on luggage. The TSA found more than 6,000 guns at checkpoints this year, and most were loaded.
Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas attract many casual travelers, and they often have questions about what they can bring on planes.
The TSA has a list on its website of prohibited or restricted items.
Drivers should be aware that Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons will be the worst times to travel by car, but navigating highways should be smooth on Thanksgiving, according to transportation analytics firm INRIX.
On the way back, the best travel times for motorists are before 1 p.m. on Sunday and before 8 a.m. or after 7 p.m. on Monday, the company said.
In metropolitan areas like Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Washington, “traffic is expected to be more than double what it usually is on a normal day,” said Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at INRIX .
