Last October, when I booked a red-eye flight home for my daughter Maggie, departing out of LAX and bound for JFK on December 23rd, I did so with a bit of trepidation. Any concern that I had was not so much based on the fact that the week leading into and around the Christmas and New Year holidays is the busiest time of the year for air travel, but rather, based upon the spontaneous occurrence of some random ‘weather event’ in the northeast creating a ‘perfect storm’ (or domino effect) for scheduled air travel and at airports throughout the country.
But after the reservation was made, I put aside any concerns about events beyond my control and happily anticipated my daughter’s visit… ’Que sera, sera’… whatever will be, will be.
Much to my delight, there was nary a single travel hitch or weather event. My daughter’s flight out of Los Angeles departed on time and landed at JFK, deplaning at Terminal 5 ahead of schedule. After parking in the T5 lot, my husband and I made our way to the baggage claim area, where we greeted her and her little dog ‘Pierre,’ who was visiting New York for the very first time.
Operations at JFK International could not have been smoother, and from my viewpoint, Terminal 5 was run like a smoothly-oiled machine. As expected, the lines through TSA were busy, but all were moving extremely well, and the overhead flight information boards showed no delays or cancellations.
Given the Port Authority’s Dec. 19th Travel Advisory that the PANYNJ expected the week of 12/12/23 – 1/2/24 to be the busiest Christmas and New Year travel ever for all of the agency’s three major airports, with nearly 5.2 million air passengers expected, it is incredible to think about how fantastic it is to have the mobility to travel 5 hours, or a day, across the country or anywhere in the world, not only during the holidays but all the year round.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, the latest numbers for 2023 holiday air travel surpassed numbers from the same week last year, with the TSA screening over 17 million passengers at airports nationwide. Overall, according to the TSA, the number of travelers going through airport check-in is up 12.4% over the last year and is 1.4% higher than in 2019, and while passenger volume is up, flight delays are down.
For the aviation industry, these are great figures to start the new year; having the whole family together for Christmas, a rarity these days, is priceless.
Happy New Year!
