Holiday travel season kicks off ahead of Thanksgiving

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - Busy travel is probably one of your least favorite parts about Thanksgiving. Some people flying into Richmond International Airport said they’re already seeing a higher volume of passengers.

“It was pretty busy I had a layover over in Midway it was just a lot of bustling going on,” explained Marshall Fortin who was flying into Richmond on Sunday.

Richmond International Airport is expecting roughly 150,000 passengers to travel through its airport over the next week. Last year there were lots of cancelled flights due to staffing shortages. This year the only thing driving cancellations is bad weather. With an anticipated normal Thanksgiving travel period, RIC recommends leaving with enough time to get checked in for your flight. That means arriving 90 minutes before your departure.

“I can only imagine it’s going to get more stressful this next week,” Fortin said.

Lots of cars will be hitting the roads too. AAA expects that more than 1.4 million Virginians will be traveling for the holiday. AAA is also reporting that the number of people driving for Thanksgiving this year is up slightly from last year but down about 6 percent from the numbers reported pre-pandemic in 2019.

“With holidays back at Memorial Day and 4th of July we saw a similar thing higher than last year but just under the levels we saw in the pre-pandemic days,” said Morgan Dean who is the spokesperson for AAA Mid-Atlantic.

There’s some good news for drivers too as gas prices have been continuing to drop. They’re expected to stay that way when you’re filling up over the next week.

“That’s not to say that some higher demand over the next week couldn’t start to push prices back up but for right now we’re seeing prices continue to drop,” Dean stated.

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