COVID isn’t spooking us. Neither, it seems, is the trauma of Southwest stranding hundreds of thousands of us at airports across the country last year. This year, dare we say, even the weather forecast seems to be in our favor.
We’re traveling again this Thanksgiving — and in record numbers. Seven-and-a-half million Californians — nearly one-fifth of the state — are expected to venture a distance of over 50 miles during the holiday week.
That will make it the busiest year for Thanksgiving travel in the past two decades, according to AAA.
“We may be far enough removed from pandemic restrictions for people to get back to the traveling they used to do,” said John Treanor, a spokesperson for the travel association. “The appetite for travel has returned.”
Since last year’s frantic Christmas travel meltdown, airlines say they have been working to correct the staffing shortages and computer shortcomings that plagued the industry after three years of reduced pandemic travel.
“Airlines have hired thousands of new pilots, flight attendants and other workers, and they’ve been investing in technology,” said Henry Harteveldt, president of the Atmosphere Research Group, a San Francisco market research firm specializing in the travel industry.
With everyone watching, Southwest has been especially busy. Its operations team has been playing out possible weather scenarios in a tabletop exercise they call “war games.” And the airline held a deicing “summer school” in Denver to train its ground agents in how to efficiently clear the planes of snow and frost.
Though inflation has increased the cost of many daily purchases, the price of domestic flights around Thanksgiving has actually gone down somewhat from last year. That’s luring more families to brave the madness of airport travel this holiday — including the Kramers, who made the trip early.
They usually drive up from Southern California, like 88.7% of Thanksgiving travelers nationally, according to AAA estimates — but decided to fly into San Jose this year.
This year Daniel and Jennifer Kramer and their kids, Connor, 4, and Isabella, 1½, joined the 8.5% of Thanksgiving travelers who fly. “Flights were really cheap, and LAX was really easy,” Daniel Kramer said.
Like most Thanksgivings, the Wednesday before the holiday and the following Sunday are expected to be the busiest days for air travel. But in recent years, more people have started to travel earlier or extend trips later, said Christie Hudson, a spokeswoman for the travel site Expedia.
“With remote work, we have seen departure dates spread out,” Hudson said.
As early as Thursday, plenty of families were in the Oakland Airport, departing ahead of the rush. Kristen and Bryce Indermill and their two young children chose to fly from Dallas into Oakland a week ahead of the holiday, in part because of the lower cost.
“Also, though, we just get to spend more time with family,” Indermill said.
Oakland International Airport projects over 360,000 passengers between last Friday and Monday, Nov. 27 — a 2.2% increase from the same period last year and 85% of 2019 pre-COVID levels.
SFO predicts that it will see about 1.4 million travelers during that same time. This month, Air China, China Eastern, and China Southern all resumed flights, after pausing them in 2020. San Jose airport officials had no projections to provide.
It’s not just the Bay Area that’ll be busy. For the first time since COVID, TSA passenger projections across the country are higher for air travel this week than they were in 2019.
And it’s not just the skies that will be busier. With gas prices easing from $6 earlier this fall, more Californians will be hitting the road this year, too. California gas prices are down 7% from $5.37 a gallon last Thanksgiving to $5.02 per gallon as of Friday, according to AAA.
Like air travel, the roads will also be at their busiest on Wednesday and Sunday on either end of the holiday. Highway 101 between Monterey and San Francisco is expected to see the biggest increase in traffic, according to AAA, with the trip expected to take around 3 hours and 15 minutes on Sunday from 2 to 8 p.m. — a 63% increase from normal driving time.
Weather isn’t expected to be a factor for those traveling in the Bay Area, said Sarah McCorkle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Thanksgiving week is expected to be a dry one in California. While rain may soak the East Coast during the latter half of the week, no major storms are expected.
That’s good news for those who may still be recovering from last year’s Christmas travel season when Southwest stranded passengers and their luggage across the country, cancelling 17,000 flights — nearly two-thirds of its schedule — after crews and planes were separated following a massive winter storm. The meltdown prompted outrage from consumers and led to a Department of Transportation investigation. Southwest said in a recent filing that it expects to receive a fine from the federal government.
Among those travelers stranded by Southwest last year were Mollie Clarke and her baby, Sophia. At just a year old, baby Sophia has already been on 43 flights. She’s exactly old enough to have lived through last year’s Southwest fiasco, which kept the Clarkes grounded in Chicago for 24 hours on the way home to Oakland.
But that didn’t stop Clarke from booking with Southwest for her family’s holiday travels this year.
“They made up for it,” Clarke said. She and her husband have taken advantage of Southwest companion passes — once they hit a certain number of miles traveled with the airline, they can buy two tickets for the price of one. “It’s ideal for all the things that come with kids.”
Southwest passengers in general don’t seem to be holding a grudge. In an October earnings call, Southwest said that it had already booked more passengers for December travel than it had at the same time last year.
In Oakland this week, Katie Herrmann and her mom, Kim, also happily rebooked on Southwest for their travels to St. Louis this holiday season, even after getting stuck in the Denver Airport for a whole day last winter.
“These days, every airline has their own controversy,” Katie Herrmann reasoned. “But you need to get where you gotta go.”
