Americans are expected to travel in near-record numbers this holiday season, with airports their busiest ever and roads more packed than any time since the COVID-19 lockdown.
About 5.9 million Illinoisans will travel more than 50 miles over the holidays, between Dec. 23 and New Year’s Day, according to auto club AAA. About 90% of those people will travel by car.
That’s 3.5% more people traveling than the same period last year. But it’s still about 3% less busy than the record travel in 2019, the last travel period before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those figures mirror national trends. More than 115 million Americans will travel over the holiday season, according to AAA.
“With a record number of travelers, the roads, airports and cruise lines will be more crowded than normal,” said Debbie Haas, vice president of travel for AAA.
Roads should be busiest on Dec. 23, and Dec. 28, according to INRIX, which analyzes transportation data. Avoid the worst congestion by traveling before lunchtime or after 7 p.m., INRIX advises.
In Illinois, more than 5.3 million residents will drive this holiday season, the second-highest number since 2019. That will be 2.5% higher than the number of travelers last year, AAA predicts.
Drivers can expect to pay about the same for a gallon of gas that they did last holiday season, when the Illinois average on Christmas Day was $3.22, according to AAA.
More Americans — about 7. 5 million — will travel by air this holiday season than ever before, blowing past the previous record, set in 2019, by more than 200,000, according to the FAA.
The busiest day for air travel should be Thursday, with more than 48,000 scheduled flights, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Travel habits are changing, with people leaving earlier and returning later. American Airlines now considers its winter holiday period to run from Dec. 20 to Jan. 8. The airline said that change reflects new “travel habits of our customers and school schedules.”
The travel period has spread out so much, Delta Airlines said it has a “seven-way tie” for its busiest day.
About 2.8 million passengers will fly per day over the holidays, a 16% increase over last year, according to industry lobby group Airlines for America. Airlines count passengers twice if they have a connecting flight, so their numbers are higher than the FAA’s.
Chicago-based United Airlines plans to fly 9 million people, a 12% increase over last year, according to CNN.
For those willing to wait a little longer, air travel will be much less busy in the days immediately leading up to Christmas. Christmas Eve should have nearly half as many air travelers.
People are traveling by air in record numbers this year, according to checkpoint data from the Transportation Security Administration. Yet despite a major increase in flights, delays and cancellations remain lower than even pre-pandemic levels, the FAA says.
People passing through U.S. airport checkpoints is up 12% over last year, and 1.4% over 2019, the TSA said.
Travel over the Thanksgiving Day holiday topped 2019 numbers, peaking at 2.9 million screened on Nov. 26, a single-day record for the TSA.
