What’s The Busiest Travel Day Of The Year?

In a world where commercial airlines depend heavily upon high levels of demand for passenger travel during key vacation periods, airlines in the United States truly have an ace up their sleeve. When the summer travel season winds down in Europe and the United States, the most profitable season of the year comes to an end, and the dreaded fall, during which carriers tend to see far lower margins, begins.
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For European airlines, these are truly the dark months, periods that see the weakest levels of passenger demand and a time in which airline pockets are the shallowest they are at any point throughout the year, with the next major boom in travel coming during the Christmas holiday. In the United States, however, the Thanksgiving holiday provides what is often cited as the busiest week of the entire travel year, one in which airlines truly make their money off of fares that are through the roof.
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The busiest travel holiday of the year
With schools giving students multiple days off and almost all adult jobs providing time off for Thanksgiving, almost all of America has at least a few days off during this festive period, which most will choose to spend alongside friends and family. As a result, millions of Americans travel each year during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, making it historically one of the busiest travel weeks of the entire year.
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For decades, the busiest travel day of the entire year (as measured by the total number of passengers at TSA checkpoints) has been the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when it seems the entire world travels back to work or school after visiting home, friends, or family. Additionally, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving has typically clocked as the second-busiest day of the year, with most traveling home on that day in advance of the upcoming holiday.
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COVID-19, as it always seems to be the case, shifted the nature of Thanksgiving holiday travel, as the flexibility of remote work has given more people the opportunity to travel home earlier and stay longer. As a result, the travel dynamics associated with the Thanksgiving holiday have changed, and, in many ways, they have done so in the airlines’ favor. Let’s take a deeper look at how Thanksgiving holiday travel has changed post-COVID, and the impact it has on the airline industry as a whole today.
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It is important to look at the baseline from 2019
To analyze the impact that the COVID-19 Pandemic has had on Thanksgiving travel, it is important to take a look at the baseline from 2019, the last year in which we have reliable data for passenger travel demand. According to statistics from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the busiest travel day of the year was December 1st, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
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On this day, 2.87 million passengers passed through security checkpoints. It is important to note that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving also increased traffic, but no other day during the Thanksgiving holiday period cracked the ten busiest travel days of the year, with the others all coming during the summer.
As a result, the nature of Thanksgiving travel prior to the pandemic was fairly rigid, with the largest portion of passengers flying back to their work, school, or home on Sunday after the holiday, with a mix of travelers departing on the Tuesday and Wednesday prior. In an era without remote work and with no option for students to attend classes remotely, leaving on Tuesday or Wednesday and coming back on Sunday was essentially your only option.
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Flexibility has changed the nature of Thanksgiving travel
Airlines in the United States are currently wrapping up the Thanksgiving travel season, one which is defined by flexible travel options and passengers traveling for longer than they have before. From the perspective of remote workers, the opportunity to work the two or three-day week from home offers passengers the opportunity to fly out the Friday before Thanksgiving and have an extended stay at their destination.
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Alternatively, they can leave on the Tuesday or Wednesday before the holiday and spend a few days working remotely before returning later in the next week. All of this additional flexibility has encouraged more people to travel than ever, with Thanksgiving travel numbers this year expected to shatter records.
According to the latest numbers from Travel Noire, the projected passenger counts for 2024 align with these expectations. The busiest days this year are expected to be November 26th and 27th, the two days prior to Thanksgiving, and Sunday, December 1st. Each of these days is expected to see more than 2.8 million passengers, which would place all these days in the top five for 2019.
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So what does this mean for the airline industry?
US airlines now have the opportunity to capitalize on increased demand for travel during the Thanksgiving holiday, given the increased flexibility created by the post-COVID labor and academic environment. As a result, carriers will need to continue examining how to optimize their schedules to serve the most passengers as conveniently as possible during this busy holiday period, and the TSA will need to continue preparing for more and more passengers during this popular travel season.