Thanksgiving, Holiday Travel | featured news

The number of Americans hitting the road this Thanksgiving is expected to increase slightly from a year ago.

Thanksgiving is an infamously challenging weekend to fly, and the closing Sunday has a longstanding reputation as the most heavily traveled day of the entire year in this country. USA Today just reported that this year will be exceptionally bad (good if you are an airline) with 23.7 million passengers over the 12-day busy period surrounding Thanksgiving, up 150,000 from last year. The lightest travel day, not surprisingly, is Thanksgiving itself, while the busiest are the following Sunday and Monday with 2.4 and 2.3 million flyers respectively.

Undeterred by costlier gas and airfare, millions of Americans set out Wednesday to see friends and family in what is expected to be the nation's busiest Thanksgiving weekend since the financial meltdown more than three years ago....

Feasting on turkey aside, brace yourself for that other Thanksgiving ritual: joining a nationwide mad dash to make it to a family gathering and back in a journey that can exasperate even the most seasoned traveler.

Millions of Americans took to the skies on Wednesday for the start of the Thanksgiving holiday amid protests by some travelers about heightened security procedures.