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The late crush of holiday travelers is picking up steam, with about 2.7 million people expected to board flights on Wednesday and millions more planning to drive to Thanksgiving celebrations.<\/p>\n
Airline officials say they are confident that they can avoid the kind of massive disruptions that have marred past holiday seasons, such as the meltdown at Southwest Airlines over last Christmas.<\/p>\n
Airlines have added tens of thousands of employees in the last couple years, and Southwest says it has bought more winter equipment to keep planes moving even during sub-freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n
Security lines at airports could be long because of the crowds. Delta Air Lines is telling passengers to arrive at the airport at least two hours before their flight if they are traveling within the United States, three hours early if they\u2019re flying overseas \u2014 and maybe earlier on Sunday and Monday.<\/p>\n
The holiday will also test the Federal Aviation Administration, which faces shortages of air traffic controllers at key facilities that caused reductions in flights to the New York City area this summer and fall.<\/p>\n
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a news conference Monday that the government has prepared for holiday travel by hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the East Coast and providing grants to airports for snowplows and deicing equipment.<\/p>\n
Nearly three-fourths of flight delays are\u00a0caused by weather, according to the FAA. The agency\u2019s figures indicate that the rate of canceled flights is down this year from last year, when airlines didn\u2019t have enough staff to handle the strong recovery in travel after the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The Transportation Security Administration predicts that it will screen 2.7 million passengers Wednesday and a record 2.9 million on Sunday, the biggest day for return trips. That would narrowly beat TSA\u2019s all-time mark set on June 30.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are ready for the holidays. We\u2019re confident we have enough agents,\u201d TSA Administrator David Pekoske said Tuesday on ABC\u2019s \u201cGood Morning America.\u201d<\/p>\n
He urged travelers to give themself extra time to get through busy airports and be considerate of TSA agents, gate agents and flight crews and others who are giving up their holidays.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just ask passengers to thank people for what they\u2019re doing. They\u2019re making sure the system is safe and secure. That\u2019s a tall order,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
AAA predicts that 55.4 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home between Wednesday and Sunday, the third-highest forecast ever by the auto club. AAA says most of them — 49.1 million — will drive.<\/p>\n
Drivers will get a break from last year on gasoline prices. AAA says the nationwide\u00a0average for gas\u00a0was down to $3.29 a gallon on Tuesday, compared with $3.66 a year ago.<\/p>\n
Air travelers will enjoy lower prices too. Airfares in October were down 13% from last year, according to government figures, and fares around Thanksgiving have been about 14% lower than a year ago, according to the travel site Hopper.<\/p>\n
Even so, the high cost of rent, food, health care and other expenses were weighing on people\u2019s travel plans.<\/p>\n
Jason McQueary, a 25-year-old social worker and graduate student said rent and other essentials eat up most of his paycheck and he was grateful for his credit card points, which brought down the cost of his roundtrip flight from Denver to Chicago from $450 to $150.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just like, \u2018man, I\u2019m glad I only come home once a year,\u2019\u201d said McQueary, who was waiting to get picked up Tuesday after arriving to Chicago O\u2019Hare International Airport to spend Thanksgiving with family in his hometown of Byron, Illinois.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] The late crush of holiday travelers is picking up steam, with about 2.7 million people expected to board flights on Wednesday and millions more planning to drive to Thanksgiving celebrations. Airline officials say they are confident that they can avoid the kind of massive disruptions that have marred past holiday seasons, such as the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}