In the region, nearly 286,000 people from Montgomery, Miami, Greene and Clark counties will travel 50 miles or more.
“We keep seeing what our travel experts are telling us, that people still just are anxious to get back out and travel,” AAA Club Alliance spokeswoman Kara Hitchens told this news outlet. “I think that COVID had a long, lasting effect, and we know that there’s still some folks who who continue to get COVID, so people just want to make sure that they get that time in together with their family and friends and and we just keep seeing (travel numbers) growing over and over” each year.
The Thanksgiving weekend, which was previously defined as the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through and including the Sunday after, was extended this year by AAA to include the Tuesday before and Monday after the holiday.
Those who are driving to their Thanksgiving destination will find roads more packed than they’ve been in years past.
Approximately 71.7 million people nationwide are projected to travel by vehicle, an additional 1.3 million travelers on the road compared to last year. That number eclipses pre-pandemic numbers of 2019, when 70.6 million people hit the road to their Thanksgiving destinations.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Nearly 3 million Ohioans are projected be among those ranks, with an expected 1.8% boost in travelers compared to Thanksgiving 2023 jamming roadways in the Buckeye State and beyond.
Those traveling by car should ensure they get their vehicle checked beforehand, Hitchens said. They should also schedule their road trip for a time that won’t see as much traffic. Wednesday afternoon between 1 and 5 p.m. is expected to be the worst travel period nationally, with trips taking as much at four times longer than normal in major metropolitan areas, according to INRIX, a global transportation analytics company.
Also analyzed by AAA are gas prices, which are lower than last year in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and the second lowest since 2019, according to AAA.
Gas prices have fallen to multi-year lows, including 29 states where average prices are currently below $3 per gallon, according to data from GasBuddy.
Lows for gas in Montgomery, Butler and Clark counties sat at $2.42, $2.52 and $2.59, respectively, early Friday afternoon.
GasBuddy’s annual Thanksgiving Travel Survey shows that 72% of Americans plan to take a road trip this holiday weekend, a 75% increase from the 41% that planned to take a trip by car in November 2023.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Average gas prices in Ohio on Friday sat at $2.89, 18 cents lower than a year ago, when gas cost $3.07, AAA data shows. But gas prices in Ohio have the potential to rise ahead of the holiday weekend as the result of a price cycle, according to Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis,.
Gas stations engage in price-cycling by gradually lowering prices to undercut competitors, overlooking small market changes daily until their profit margins run thin, De Haan said. When that’s no longer profitable, they hike prices by 25 to 40 cents per gallon to maintain profit margins of 15 to 20 cents per gallon, he said.
Part of the possible “little bit of a jump” in gas prices by the start of Thanksgiving weekend travels could come as a the result of the BP refinery in northwest Indiana not yet returning from maintenance and running a few weeks late.
“Ultimately, motorists are still going to see the cheapest Thanksgiving to fill up since Thanksgiving of 2020, when few of us were doing that,” De Haan said.
More people are choosing to travel by airplane this year, 5.84 million of them nationwide, a 2% increase compared to last year and a nearly 11% increase over 2019, according to AAA.
Nearly 275,000 Ohioans will be traveling this holiday weekend, up 3.5% over Thanksgiving 2023. Among them will be approximately 22,000 from Montgomery, Miami, Greene and Clark counties, up 0.3% compared to last year.
Dayton International Airport touts itself as an “easy to and through,” easy-to-navigate airport, and officials there suggest travelers give themselves plenty of time during the holiday weekend.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
“We recommend that passengers are in the airport terminal no less than 90 minutes prior to their scheduled departure time,” said airport spokeswoman Melissa Patsiavos.
Load factors at the airport have averaged 85% all year and are expected to reach or exceed that for holiday travel, Patsiavos said.
During the holiday rush period now through Christmas, Dayton International Airport has more than 1,000 available seats than it had in 2023 as the result of more flights being added out of the airport, she said.
This year’s holiday season, airlines have scheduled nearly 29,000 total arriving and departing seats at Dayton International Airport, compared to approximately 27,700 seats last year, Patsiavos said.
“The airlines have planned for growth at (the airport), and year-over-year seat capacity for the Thanksgiving week has increased around 4%,” she said.
Based on scheduled seat capacity, airlines anticipate Tuesday to be the peak travel day with 4,956 total arriving and departing seats scheduled, Patsiavos said.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Nationally, nearly 2.3 million people are expected to travel by alternate modes of transportation, including buses, cruises, and trains, a 9% increase compared to 2023 and an 18% leap over 2019. Ohioans will account for 94,000 of that number, up 9.1%.
A continued larger-than-usual increase in people traveling that way comes in large part due to increased post-pandemic demand, especially for cruises, Hitchens said. AAA says domestic and international cruise bookings are up 20% compared to last Thanksgiving.
“The cruise ships took a big, big hit during the pandemic, and we saw that they are the slowest to come back fully online,” Hitchens said. “They’re still coming back fully online, so that’s why they continue to grow large year over year.”
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