With an estimated 2.5 million travelers passing through Los Angeles International Airport between Nov. 16 and Thanksgiving weekend, according to officials, it’s one of the busiest travel seasons of the year.
Add service dog into the mix and the frenzy of travel can be even more hectic.
“She’s been kind of glued to us because it’s overwhelming, how busy it is,” Merna Michael said of her dog named Maya.
At LAX, Michael, her family and their pet were on their way back to Arizona after a visit to Southern California.
“It’s definitely busier. It’s way more crowded,” she told KTLA’s Omar Lewis. “It’s still pretty easy because we have pre-check getting through security. That, honestly, has been a big help for us, but other than that, I think there’s just more people traveling now than there were last year.”
Doug Shupe with AAA told KTLA that they’re projecting this Thanksgiving holiday to be the third busiest on record due to the number of travelers they haven’t seen since before the pandemic started.
“The overall travel volume this Thanksgiving was about 3% higher than last year and about 3.5% higher than in 2019,” Shupe said.
With traffic in and around LAX busier than normal Sunday, airport officials said these latest numbers show that travelers are making up for time lost with family and friends in recent years.
“So far, it wasn’t bad,” driver Melissa Fultz said. “My son came out here from Houston and we were able to come in and drop him right off.”
Drivers should allow for extra time getting to and from the airport, a lesson musician Dylan Lawrence Monti learned after traveling to Denver for Thanksgiving.
“It was crazy,” he said. “On my way here, actually, I was late. I didn’t leave in time. So, I ran through check-in and then I got there, like, last call for boarding. I got there just in time. I almost missed my flight.”
As the crush of Thanksgiving travel might be coming to an end, officials are quick to say that travelers shouldn’t expect to catch any breaks for upcoming holiday travel in December either because they’re expecting more record-breaking numbers to come.
“That tells us that it’s going to be a very busy travel season for the year-end holidays, including Hannukah, Christmas and the New Year,” Shupe said.