Millions ready to take to skies for Labor Day
Flying for Labor Day? You won’t be alone.
The Airlines for America trade group estimates 16.5 million passengers will fly worldwide on U.S. carriers during a weeklong period bracketing Labor Day, which is Monday.
The total for the Wednesday (Aug. 29)-through-Tuesday (Sept. 4) window would be a 3.5 percent increase from comparable dates a year ago.
To help meet the spike in holiday travel, U.S. airlines have added a total of about 92,000 more seats to their schedules as compared with the same window in 2017.
The busiest day for Labor Day travel will be Friday, when an estimated 2.76 million passengers will fly aboard U.S. airlines, according to A4A.
Those getting an early start on holiday travel will help make Thursday the second-busiest day of the period, when
2.6 million are expected to fly. Monday, typically the most-popular “return day” for Labor Day travel, will be the third-busiest during the weeklong window with an estimated 2.58 million flying on U.S. carriers.
The slowest days? Those will come on the weekend itself, with A4A saying Saturday, Sept. 1, and Sunday, Sept. 2, “are also historically among the lightest days of the year.”
“2018 has been an exceptionally busy year for air travel, with 20 out of the 25 busiest days ever recorded by the Transportation Security Administration occurring so far this year,” A4A Chief Economist John Heimlich said in a statement.