It’s set to be another busy Thanksgiving for travel, with nearly 80 million people in the United States predicted to be out on America’s roads, airlines and trains over the season, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
Long a harvest celebration, Thanksgiving has been a national holiday in the States since 1777, when it was used to celebrate the defeat of the British at Saratoga. It has had religious and military connotations over the centuries but is these days generally seen as an opportunity to get together with family and friends.
Car journeys up thanks to cheap fuel
The period the AAA are looking at this year includes the Tuesday before and Monday after Thanksgiving for the first time, in a change the body says better captures people’s travel behaviour. The holiday will see 79.9 million people making trips of over 50 miles (80 km). That’s 1.7 million more than in 2023, and beats 2019’s figure by 2 million.
Most of those journeys (71.7 million of them) will be taking place by road. Lower fuel prices may be part of the reason why 1.3 million more Americans will choose to travel by car. The AAA says the Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons before the holiday will be the busiest for road traffic, while Thanksgiving Day itself is “typically clear.”
Analysis of car rental data from Hertz suggests hotspots around Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Oahu, Orlando, and Phoenix, while INRIX expert Bob Pishoe, reported by NBC, says drivers should stay on top of road traffic alerts in “Boston, New York, LA, Seattle, and Washington, DC, where traffic is expected to be more than double” compared to a typical weekday.
Cruises and international flights prove popular too
The skies will also be fuller than usual, with a new record of 5.84 million people making flight plans. The cost of flying has gone up, perhaps explaining the increase of just 2% in flyers year-on-year, but the numbers are up around 10% in 2019 (depending on how the stats are measured). Interestingly, international flight bookings for Thanksgiving have risen by 23% this year, the AAA has said.
Bus and train journeys, as well as cruises, taken together as “other forms of transport” are also set to see an increase, of around 9% on 2023, and 18% on 2019.
Florida appears the most popular destination and sunseekers are also pushing cruise bookings up by around 20%. Who can blame them, with winter storms expected to blow in from the Rockies as Thanksgiving approaches, but still, they should pack cannily – some forecasters are even saying the Gulf Coast could see frost over the next few days.
