U.S. air travel sets busiest for Thanksgiving Day

Friday, November 26, 2021

Airports and commercial airlines across the U.S. registered one of their busiest days since before the pandemic on Wednesday as millions of Americans travelled to visit loved ones for the Thanksgiving holiday. Through Tuesday, for 6 days in a row, daily airport passenger volumes exceeded two million people, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

 On Sunday, an estimation of 2.4 million people is expected to stream through airport security. Airlines had a rocky reemergence from the pandemic, and some carriers have been especially vulnerable to bad weather or glitches that caused their operations to unravel for days, resulting in thousands of cancelled flights.

According to FlightAware (a flight tracking site) said less than 1% of U.S. domestic flights were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday night airlines had cancelled around 100 U.S. flights that day.

 Airlines including Southwest, JetBlue Airways Corp., and American Airlines Group Inc. have been offered incentives such as bonuses and extra pay for employees who work over the holidays.

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