• A record number of flyers will be in airports for the Christmas-New Year’s period- including SFO

  A record number of flyers will be in airports for the Christmas-New Year’s period- including SFO

  
  Photo: Chris McGinnis
  

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A record number of flyers will be in airports for the Christmas-New Year’s period- including SFO

A record number of flyers will be in airports for the Christmas-New Year’s period- including SFO

Photo: Chris McGinnis

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How bad will your holiday airline trip be this year? About 5 or 6 percent worse than last year. That’s the increase in passenger numbers that travelers are expected to encounter at the nation’s airports over the Christmas-New Year’s period.

Airlines for America (A4A), the trade organization for major U.S. carriers, said this week its members are expecting to carry a record 45.7 million passengers during the 18-day holiday period (December 20-January 6), or 5.2 percent more than last year.

That works out to 126,000 more travelers per day than during the same period a year ago.
To handle the extra crowds, A4A said, its member airlines have scheduled flights totaling an extra 143,000 seats a day during that period.

The numbers are a little different at the Transportation Security Administration, which came out with its own holiday travel forecast. TSA said it expects its airport screeners to handle six percent more passengers than last year, or an average of 2.3 million a day over the holiday period, and it is scheduling overtime hours for its screeners to handle the load. (A4A is predicting 2.54 million a day.)

Both A4A and TSA agree on one thing: The busiest travel day will be Friday, December 21, when TSA is gearing up to screen more than 2.7 million passengers. The airline group said the second- and third-busiest travel days will be Thursday, December 20 and Wednesday, December 26 respectively, while the lightest travel days will be December 24 and 25 and Saturday, January 5.

TSA is advising travelers that airport traffic (on the roads and in the terminals) will begin to pick up noticeably on Wednesday, December 19, with increasing numbers continuing through December 24. It is reminding passengers to arrive at the airport at least two hours before their scheduled departure. The fact that many major airports like LAX, New York LaGuardia and Denver are in the midst of substantial construction and expansion projects will likely contribute to congestion for holiday travelers this year.

Some good news? When Christmas and New Year’s Day fall midweek (Tuesday this year), the holiday travel season is longer and more spread out. In this case, it begins about Wednesday, December 19 and runs all the way to the Monday after New Years, January 7.

What’s feeding the holiday travel frenzy? A4A says it’s because air fares are at “historic lows.”

The airline industry’s holiday travel forecast highlights.

The airline industry’s holiday travel forecast highlights.

If the predictions are correct, this would be the fifth year in a row that year-end holiday passenger numbers set a new record. For the full year 2018, it looks like U.S. airlines will carry a record 1 billion passengers – an increase of almost 150 million in the past five years, from 2014’s 854 million. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted domestic air fares this year are running about 15 percent lower than they were in 2014, according to government figures.

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If you will be traveling over the holidays, just pray that the weather holds up. We’ve seen a number of serious storms sweep across the nation from west to east in recent weeks, resulting in thousands of flight cancellations and delays. Considering that many flights will be going out close to 100 percent full during this busy period, making a timely rebooking unlikely, a cancellation could mean that you won’t be singing “I’ll be home for Christmas” in the terminal.

Do you have any advice for holiday travelers? Ever been marooned by a storm and unable to get home for the festive season? Tell us all about it in the comments. 

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Chris McGinnis is the founder of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis.