PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A near record-breaking holiday travel season is underway as people drive, ride, and fly on the few days left before Christmas.
AAA predicts 7.5 million people will fly this holiday season, surpassing the record of 7.3 million four years ago. One of them is Megan Corless, who’s flying back to Boston.
“I assumed because of its proximity to the holidays that there would probably be a lot of people traveling,” Corless said, “but you know, come to think of it, it’s before the weekend – the Friday of – so it makes sense.”
Afternoon waits at the TSA security line at Terminals D and E were between 15 and 30 minutes. But Corless expected to make it through in about 5 minutes in the shorter PreCheck line.
“I hate to be a shill for it, but PreCheck is worth every penny. Especially as somebody who has a lot of flight anxiety,” she said.
As of mid-afternoon Friday, fewer than 50 flights were canceled in the U.S., and about 1,200 were delayed, according to FlightAware.
Evan Wheeler and Tina Hillman of Durham, North Carolina, experienced the latter.
The two flew here to visit friends for Christmas, but they were killing time Friday because the second leg of their trip – a flight to Orlando – was taking off two and a half hours late.
“I think we were already stressed about traveling during the holiday and our flight’s already been delayed once, so we’re just trying to be as positive about it as we can,” Wheeler said.
Hillman says you have to expect glitches when traveling on high-volume days.
“This is actually really unusual,” Hillman said. “We’ve been really lucky with flying throughout the year. But of course around the holidays you just expect it to be a little bit more crazy, which it definitely is. But we’re just rolling with the punches right now.”
The airport expected 84,000 travelers to pass through on Friday alone, with more than one million for the 14-day holiday period.
TSA screened more than 2.6 million passengers on Thursday, which was projected as one of the busiest travel days, along with Friday and New Year's Day.