More Americans are expected to be on the move this Thanksgiving in what experts say will be one of the busiest holiday travel periods on record.
During the five-day span beginning the day before the holiday, an estimated 55.4 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home, according to AAA. That tally would make it the third-busiest Thanksgiving since the organization began tracking holiday travel, behind only 2005 and 2019. Most travelers — 49.1 million — will drive to their destinations this year, while nearly 4.7 million are expected to fly.
The Transportation Security Administration said it expects to screen 30 million airline passengers during a 12-day span beginning Friday. The Sunday after Thanksgiving will be the busiest, according to the agency, with 2.9 million people likely to be screened at U.S. airports.
The crush of travelers comes amid pressure on a system plagued by a shortage of air traffic controllers and a spate of near-miss incidents at airports that have contributed to safety concerns. For their part, airlines said they have continued hiring and investing in technology to avoid problems. Southwest Airlines, in particular, has spent millions to help avoid a repeat of widespread flight cancellations that marred holiday travel last December.
This year, airlines say they are prepared for an onslaught of holiday travelers.
United Airlines said it has added more than 550,000 seats for the Thanksgiving travel period to meet demand. Delta Air Lines estimates it will fly an average of about 530,000 customers daily, while American Airlines said the nearly 8 million customers it will fly this Thanksgiving period will be a record. Southwest Airlines offered assurances it has made investments to prevent a repeat of a meltdown that forced the cancellation of the more than 16,700 flights last year around Christmas.
The strong demand is a bright spot for carriers as they grapple with higher costs for fuel and labor amid signs the pandemic-era appetite for travel might be tapering. Demand for international travel, particularly to Europe, was strong this year, but several carriers reported a softening in demand for domestic destinations. At the same time, business travelers have not fully returned.
Southwest, Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines were among carriers to signal this fall that bookings were on the lower end of estimates. Spirit and JetBlue Airways — embroiled in a court battle with the Justice Department over merger plans — were among carriers to report recent quarterly losses.
George Ferguson, a senior aerospace analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, said he isn’t surprised that near-record numbers of Americans will be on the move around Thanksgiving, but noted that outside peak holiday periods, there are indications the appetite for “revenge travel” that fueled the industry’s dramatic pandemic-era rebound may be waning.
“I think it’s the end of the post-pandemic frenzy, where you pay whatever it takes to get to Disney,” he said. “People finally went and cried ‘uncle’ on that.”
Helane Becker, a managing director and senior research analyst who covers airlines for investment bank TD Cowen, said 2023 has been a challenging year for some consumers, who found themselves paying more for gasoline and food.
“There have been a lot of inflationary pressures on people’s personal balance sheets,” she said. “Airfares are up — even though they’re down from the peak in the summer of 2022, they’re still up over what people may have paid last year for Thanksgiving.”
After a relatively trouble-free summer for air travel, carriers said they expect to end the year on a high note. The Federal Aviation Administration said skies will be most crowded the day before Thanksgiving, when more than 49,600 flights are forecast to operate.
American Airlines expects to transport 7.8 million customers over a 13-day Thanksgiving travel span beginning Thursday — about 500,000 more than in 2022. David Seymour, chief operating officer for American Airlines, said after cancellations and delays earlier in the pandemic, the carrier looked at its operations with the goal of ensuring that when disruptions hit, American is able to restore normalcy as quickly as possible.
“We don’t let the storm hit us and then figure it out, we get ahead of it,” he said.
Executives at Southwest spent months after last December’s meltdown conducting an analysis of the factors that contributed to massive disruptions that affected more than 1 million passengers. The company has made investments to handle extreme winter weather at key airports, including those in Denver, Chicago and Nashville.
Andrew Watterson, the airline’s chief operating officer, said those changes include more ramp workers, additional de-icing pads and reorganizing internal operations to get ahead of potential disruptions.
“We are set up better than ever and feel confident as we go into the holiday, winter holiday travel season,” he said.
Last year was the second consecutive year airlines had touted their Thanksgiving performance only to run into trouble between Christmas and New Year’s. In 2021, carriers canceled 28,000 flights during the period after a surge in coronavirus cases left them short-staffed while winter weather wreaked havoc on their operations.
While airlines have largely recovered from staffing shortages, industry officials say there’s no quick fix to a dearth of air traffic controllers. The shortage has forced some carriers the reduce flights out of New York-area airports — a strategy that was used to head off potential delays and cancellations this past summer.
According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, there are 1,000 fewer qualified air traffic controllers compared to a decade ago. At 40 percent of FAA facilities, employees are working six days a week at least once a month and several are working permanent six-day-a-week schedules, Rich Santa, the union’s president, said during a recent Senate hearing.
At the same time, airlines have added workers in recent months to avoid the disruptions that have crept up during some busy holidays. They also have poured money into mobile apps that enable customers to receive updates, track their bags and rebook flights when problems do occur.
Airlines have been on a hiring binge to make up for the more than 50,000 employees who left early in the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. passenger airlines in September had more than 506,000 full-time equivalent employees — up 12.4 percent from September 2019. It marked the 29th straight month of employee growth in the industry.
Some travelers say they are beginning to see improvements as airlines restore or add service to communities that was cut during the pandemic.
Last year, it took Danelle Morton, 68, two plane changes to get from Northern California to New Orleans to spend Thanksgiving with friends. This year, she will be able to fly nonstop on Thanksgiving Day. With more flexible remote work arrangements, Morton said she will extend her stay and return the following Thursday.
Similarly, Daniel Powers, a consultant from Chicago, said he took advantage of his office’s flexible work arrangements to get a cheaper airfare and more time with family during Thanksgiving. The 23-year-old estimated he saved more than $300 by flying home two days later on Tuesday, rather than the Sunday after the holiday.
“Holiday meltdowns at airlines in previous years inspired me to build contingency into my plans,” he wrote in an email. Any flight disruptions on Sunday will likely impact flights on Monday as customers scramble to rebook. “Tuesday,” he wrote, “feels safe.”