NEW YORK — It’s beginning to look a lot like a hectic holiday travel season, but it might go relatively smoothly if the weather cooperates.
Many travelers Eyewitness News spoke to said they got an early start so they could avoid the crowds.
Terminal B at LaGuardia was moving things along with security and it seemed like a regular Friday to start, especially for people with PreCheck.
“We like to get into some warm weather, get away for a few days, vacate and just relax as a family,” said Larry Lowe, a traveler. “Easy getting here,15 minutes from Manhattan, no problems getting a car and we’re ready to go!”
“Stay safe, keep your bag close as always. It’s busy so you just have to keep everything together,” another traveler said. One tip is to put an AirTag in your bag.
Travel over Christmas and New Year’s is spread out over many days, so the peaks in the U.S. are likely to be lower than they were during the Thanksgiving holiday.
So far this year, airlines have canceled 1.2% of U.S. flights, down nearly half from 2.1% over the same period last year. Cancellations were well below 1% during Thanksgiving, according to FlightAware.
“I don’t want to jinx us, but so far 2023 has seen the lowest cancellation rate in the last five years,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday. He added, however, that winter weather “will certainly be a challenge in the next few weeks.”
Canceled flights surged last year, as airlines were caught short-staffed when travel rebounded from the pandemic more quickly than expected. Since then, U.S. airlines have hired thousands of pilots, flight attendants and other workers, and the cancellation rate has come down.
After struggling with cancellations and other disruptions last year, European travel has also been smoother this year and more people are expected travel over Christmas and New Year’s, said Mike Arnot, spokesman for Cirium, an aviation analytics company. Still, about 3% of flights within Europe have been canceled in so far in December, and nearly 30% have been delayed, according to Cirium.
Cirium projected that the number of seats flown within Europe will rise 10% between Dec. 22 and Jan. 2 compared to a similar period in 2023.
Globally, air travel has still not fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. About 8.6 billion people are projected to travel through the world’s airports in 2023, according to Airports Council International, a Montreal-based trade group for airports. That’s about 94% of the passenger volume in 2019, before the pandemic hit.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says it is creating more air-traffic routes, especially along the East Coast, to help keep planes moving over the holidays.
AAA is forecasting that 115 million people will go 50 miles or more from home between Saturday and New Year’s Day. That is a 2% increase over the auto club’s forecast last year, although it would fall short of the record set in 2019.
Most of those people will drive, and they will save a bit on gasoline, compared with last Christmas. The nationwide average Wednesday was $3.08 a gallon, down 23 cents from a month ago and 6 cents from this time last year, according to AAA.
The busiest days on the road will be Saturday and next Thursday, Dec. 28, according to transportation data provider INRIX.
The Transportation Security Administration expects that the busiest days for air travel will be Friday and New Year’s Day. TSA expects to screen more than 2.5 million travelers each of those days – that’s still far short of the record 2.9 million that agents screened on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Flying is already surpassing pre-pandemic levels. The TSA has screened 12.3% more travelers than it had by this time last year and 1.4% more than in 2019. December is running about 6% above the same month last year.
Flights will be packed, testing the patience of travelers and creating competition for space in overhead bins to store carry-on bags.
“Airline gate agents are getting demerits when planes are late, so they are gate-checking far more bags to keep flights on time,” said Pauline Frommer co-president of Frommers Travel Guides.
Frommer advises putting a smart tag in any bag that gets checked so you’ll know where it is, even if the airline doesn’t.
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Associated Press Staff Writer Alexandra Olson in New York contributed to this report.
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