Trips by automobile are expected to remain the dominant mode of transportation for Thanksgiving holiday travel, too, with 94% of travelers – some 39.7 million people! – expected to hit the road this year. By contrast, passenger airlines are only expected to account for 4% of overall Thanksgiving travel with 1.62 million holiday flyers, an increase of 3.5% from last year's 1.57 million flyers.
That all basically adds up to one thing for truckers over the Thanksgiving holiday travel period this year (defined as Wednesday, November 24 to Sunday, November 28) – a lot more crowded roads than usual.
[And it also offers me the opportunity to share a clip from one of my favorite movies, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, starring the late great John Candy. I STILL laugh out loud at this scene ….]
The forecasted double-digit increase in Thanksgiving holiday travel would signify an important upturn in travel volume for the holiday after a year of negligible growth in 2009 (0.2%) and two years after a historic 25.2% decline in travel in 2008, AAA said.