Thanksgiving Travelers to Hit 27.3 Million

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Thanksgiving Travelers to Hit 27.3 Million

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There are roughly 315 million people in the United States. Some are too sick to fly. Some live too far from airports for flying to be practical. However, that leaves enough people so 27.3 million of them will be airline passengers over Thanksgiving week, which is for some reasons 12 days. The number should not tax the air travel system more than usual. It is up only 2.5% from last year.

Some analysts would argue that the number of people who travel over a holiday weekend is a sign of consumer spending strength. An increase of 2.5% is not very much. And it could be driven by ticket prices or some other factor non-airline people don’t think of.

According to Airlines for America:

Highly affordable airfare is driving that increase, and airlines are ready for more holiday travelers, adding 74,000 seats each day through larger planes and additional flights.

A4A expects U.S. airlines will carry an average of 2.27 million passengers per day over the 12-day period, which extends from Friday, Nov. 18 through Tuesday, Nov. 29.

[nativounit]

Also:

Daily passenger volumes will range from 1.51 million to 2.81 million, with the busiest travel days in ranked order expected to be Sunday, Nov. 27; Monday, Nov. 28; and Wednesday, Nov. 23. The lightest travel day is expected to be Thanksgiving Day – Thursday, Nov. 24.

So, the heaviest travel day is when people need to go back home.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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