Travelers move through a security check-in line at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Dec. 18, 2017 (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Today the U.S. airline industry enters its heaviest travel period of the year, an 18-day stretch when it will carry 45.7 million passengers, with the industry and many of its passengers in a joyous mood.
Weather looks manageable. Oil prices are way down. Americans have money to spend on travel. A government shutdown if one occurs is not expected to have a perceptible impact on TSA.
And so far, travelers seem to be in a generally good mood, based on their Twitter comments, although it is reasonable to assume that at some point someone among the 45.7 million will become outraged about something and will share their feelings via social media.
Thursday is slated to be the second heaviest travel day of the period, with U.S. carriers expecting to carry 2.87 million passengers, according to Airlines for America. Friday will be the heaviest day with 2.91 million passengers. Third heaviest will be Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, with 2.78 million. Air travel will be up 5.2% during the period, A4A said.
Traveling through Charlotte Douglas International Airport on Wednesday, on her way from Hartford to Austin, American passenger Mary Elizabeth Dunn posted this tweet: “Currently in the Charlotte NC Airport: Childrens choir singing holiday carols, beautiful Santa and Mrs Clause walking around greeting families, and joyous soldiers headed home on holiday leave.
“Might be the happiest layover I’ve ever experienced,” Dunn wrote, as she passed through American’s second busiest hub. (Dunn quickly corrected her spelling of Mrs. Claus’s name, which she termed “epically embarrassing.”)
USO of North Carolina tweeted that 3,300 soldiers were scheduled to make their way through Charlotte airport on Tuesday, “on the way to spending the holidays with their families and loved ones” as part of “Operation Exodus.”
On Wednesday, American and United both seized the opportunity to announce new routes, in press releases headlined “The More the Merrier,” by United and “28 Reasons to Fly American,” by American. The 11 new United routes start in June, while many of the 28 American routes were slated to start this week.
Among the celebrants were Ithaca Tompkins regional airport (ITH), which tweeted Wednesday: “A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held at the Ithaca Airport on 12/22 @ 10:30 am to celebrate the arrival of the first flight from Charlotte – all are welcome to attend.” A news item on the airport’s site proclaimed “If you like Ithaca, you’ll love Charlotte,” and noted, that “From endless attractions to beautiful scenery, Ithaca and Charlotte have more in common than you’d think.”
For now, American plans a single weekly Saturday morning roundtrip aboard a 50-seat Canadair regional jet flown by regional partner PSA.
American spokesman Ross Feinstein said the world’s largest airline will carry more than 11 million passengers during the 18-day holiday travel period. On Friday, its single busiest day during the 18-day holiday period, American will operate 6,830 flights carrying an estimated 660,000 passengers.
American’s slowest day will be Christmas day, with just 5,020 departures. Travel experts always advise that Christmas can be a good day to fly, with low fares and generally uncrowded airports.
The highest departure days at American’s two busiest hubs will be Dec. 27 and 28 at Dallas, with 811 departures, and Jan. 2 at Charlotte, with 724 departures.
United Airlines expects peak outbound traffic today through Saturday, with peak return traffic Jan. 3 through Jan. 6. Total traffic each peak day will be about 500,000 passengers, said spokesman Charles Hobart.
“Generally speaking, we have more domestic widebodies to help with full flights (typically 47 per day, during the holiday schedule, goes up to 66 per day) and more frequency on ‘vacation’ type destinations (ski cities, Florida, Mexico/Caribbean),” Hobart said.
Despite rain in the east, none of the major airlines expect major weather disruptions to pre-Christmas travel. Delta is “currently expecting the end of week weather [events] to be limited primarily to a rain event in Atlanta on Thursday and some rains and winds in the Northeast/New York area on Friday, where we may see some FAA/ATC driven ground delay programs,” Delta spokesman Drake Castaneda said Thursday.
Even if weather threatens to interfere with operations, “Both delays and cancellations have declined in recent years, likely a result of airlines leveraging technology to be proactive when bad weather is forecasted,” said airline software company Flight Aware, in a prepared statement. “Airlines are now able to re-accommodate passengers and relocate crews/aircraft in advance of major storms and it is evident that this is reducing the overall impact of these situations.”