Sunday was the United States’ busiest travel day since the beginning of the pandemic.
Thousands of flights were delayed yesterday in the United States as storms affected operations throughout the country. Millions of passengers were returning home from Thanksgiving travel, making it the busiest travel day since 2019.
Mass delays across the United States
Historically, the Sunday following the Thanksgiving holiday is one of the busiest travel days of every year in the United States. This year, almost 55 million people were expected to travel more than 50 miles from home for the holiday. Yesterday, nearly 7,000 flights were delayed, and 178 were canceled because of storms around the country. At the time of publication, more than 2,000 flights have been delayed in the US today, and 70 have been canceled.
Photo: Lukas Souza | Simple Flying
A large storm started near the Mississippi River Valley on Sunday morning and headed for the Northeast with heavy rains and gusty winds. Large metropolitan areas like New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham may be seriously impacted through Wednesday. Tomorrow, 25 million people in the Central US will be at risk for severe thunderstorms.
New York’s JFK Airport tweeted on Sunday and advised passengers to arrive early because of anticipated delays.
Busiest travel day since 2019
Sunday was the busiest travel day in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic. The TSA reported that almost 2.6 million people went through security checkpoints throughout the United States yesterday, the most since December 26, 2019. Between November 18 and 27, United States carriers transported 22.2 million passengers, lower than expected and about 5.5% lower than in 2019.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg thanked aviation workers throughout the United States for their effort in keeping delays and cancelations to a minimum.
As far as air traffic is concerned, yesterday’s traffic was still 11% down from the same day in 2019 and 4% higher than the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2021.
Third-busiest Thanksgiving for United
Though the United States experienced many delays, United Airlines had a stellar on-time performance during the Thanksgiving travel period. According to an e-mail United sent to Simple Flying, 86% of its flights arrived on time. The Chicago-based carrier achieved a 99.8% completion record over six days, including 100% on Wednesday, November 23.
Photo: Lukas Souza | Simple Flying
Numerous United hubs had extremely high completion percentages from Monday last week to Sunday:
- ORD – 1 cancelation
- DEN – 5 cancelation
- IAH – 6 cancelation
- IAD – 1 cancelation
- EWR – 8 cancelation
The Thanksgiving 2023 travel period was the United’s third busiest ever and the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. Yesterday, United had upwards of 476,000 customers fly throughout the country, making the third-busiest day of the year.
Source: Simple Flying
