What Are the Busiest Holiday Travel Days in Texas and Louisiana?

SHREVEPORT, LA - Big travel days are ahead. More than 115 million Americans will be traveling over the next week. Most of these folks will be going more than 50 miles away from home. 7.5 million of them will be flying and this will probably mean long lines are airports all across the nation.

The report from AAA says more Americans are expected to fly or drive far from home over Christmas than did last year, wrapping up a very busy year for travel.

According to the report, much of this travel will happen between December 23 and New Year’s Day. These numbers show an increase of 2.2% more people on the roads and in the air that we saw last year. One of the reasons for the higher numbers is attributed to lower prices at the pump.

The experts don't think we will see numbers comparable to 2019 which was the last Christmas before the Covid-19 pandemic. We had record numbers of travelers that year and gas prices were under $2 a gallon all across the south. But AAA says air travel has already surpassed 2019 levels.

TSA checkpoints will likely see an increased of more than 12% of travelers over last year and about 1.4% higher than in 2019.

We also saw heavy traffic over Thanksgiving with the Transportation Security Administration reporting higher numbers than 2019 and the one day record was set on Sunday, November 26 with more than 2.9 million flying on that day.

What Will Be the Busiest Day for Air Travel?

The AAA report says about 2.8 million people a day will be boarding flights between December 20 and January 2. The peak days are expected to be Thursday December 21 and Friday December 22 and the four days after Christmas.

What Will Be the Busiest Day on the Highways?

Transportation data company INRIX says Saturday, December 23 and Thursday December 28.

If you are hitting the road, you can expect to pay less at the pump this year. The national average for a gallon of gas is about $3.19, but it's under $3 a gallon across much of the south.