Thanksgiving air travel rebounds

Last year, almost as many Americans traveled by car during Thanksgiving as before the pandemic.

This year, they also are tak

to the skies.

The Thanksgiving holiday rush will be a major test for airlines, which have struggled with staffing shortages and occasional operational meltdowns in recent months as traffic rebounded after plunging last year.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport expects 2.22 million passengers for the Thanksgiving travel period between the Saturday before Thanksgiving and the Monday after the holiday.

That’s still below the 2.6 million people who passed through the terminals in Thanksgiving 2019, but up sharply from about 1.6 million last year.

The Wednesday before the holiday and the Sunday afterward are expected to be the busiest days of the Thanksgiving period.

After staying home during the lockdowns early in the pandemic, many people ventured out last Thanksgiving to visit families in other cities, but they went by car and avoided planes.

AAA predicts 1.6 million people in Georgia will travel this Thanksgiving, including more than 108,000 taking flights. That will bring total traveler counts to just 3% shy of 2019, with airline passenger counts within 13% of 2019. Domestic leisure air travel has almost completely recovered, according to travel experts, while business and international travel lag.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines expects to handle as many as 5.6 million passengers across its flight network from the Friday before Thanksgiving through the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. That is more than double the 2.2 million last year but still short of the 6.3 million for Thanksgiving 2019.

Delta has worked for months to ramp up its workforce for the return of travelers, but acknowledged it fell short in some areas earlier this year, leading to hourslong waits on customer service phone lines and headquarters employees called on to help staff and clean airport lounges.