Airport officials debunk myth about the busiest Thanksgiving travel day
Thanksgiving #Thanksgiving
A crowd of travelers wait in line to board their flights at LAX at Delta Airlines, Terminal 2, in this file photo.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving Thursday is a momentous day in American culture.
Not only is that the night when small, hometown bars welcome their prodigal sons and daughters home for a night out on memory lane, but that Wednesday is often considered the busiest day for travel for the whole year.
With many Americans living away from where they were raised, the conventional theory is that they tend to return to their hometowns the day before the holiday, creating a bottleneck at airports.
But Bay Area airport officials say they disagree.
Scott Wintner, spokesperson for San Jose International Airport, said that it’s a common misconception that the day before Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year.
“It may have been true for some airports but I’ve been working with airports for 20 years and that’s never been the case,” he said. “Largely, if anything, it’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving. That’s when everybody wants to come back for work or school that Monday.”
Up the Peninsula from San Jose, San Francisco International Airport spokesperson Doug Yakel agrees with this assessment and said that an entirely different season tends to see more travel than the holidays.
“Contrary to popular opinion, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is not the busiest day of the year for us,” he said. “That honor usually goes to a summer holiday, like July Fourth or Labor Day. Why? Because airlines tend to operate more flights during the summer season than during the holidays.”
Yakel added that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving isn’t even the busiest day for Thanksgiving travel.
“That honor belongs to the Friday before Thanksgiving week. Why? Because schools in California give students the entire Thanksgiving week off, so most families don’t wait until the day before Thanksgiving to fly … they make a week out of it.”
Over at Oakland International Airport, spokesperson Kaley Skantz clarified that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is indeed a busy travel day and just barely beats the other busiest day of the week in terms of traffic.
“OAK is projecting 170,000 passengers during the Thanksgiving travel period from Wednesday through Sunday,” she said. “We typically see from our numbers that the Wednesday and Sunday after Thanksgiving are the busiest travel days of the holiday. They often come very close to each other; Wednesday just barely edged out Sunday with a difference of 100.”
Regardless of which day tends to lure the most travelers, it’s fair to assume that any day during the holiday week will see an uptick in numbers, so it’s best to plan ahead and prepare.
“The bottom line,” Wintner said, “if you’re traveling during the week of Thanksgiving and around the holidays, expect it to be busy.”