Best and Worst Days to Travel for Thanksgiving

Anyone who has paid attention to the news in November each year knows that Thanksgiving is, by a long shot, the busiest time to travel in the United States. Every local TV station has its own crew at the airport on the day before Thanksgiving, hoping they’ll catch some irate traveler on camera who’s just been bumped from their third flight. But despite knowing it’s one of the worst times to travel each year, thousands of us still file into airports across the country and cross our fingers.

If you’re one of the people who absolutely can’t get out of flying home for Thanksgiving, then the next best option is to minimize your travel stress levels by avoiding the busiest travel days. This may mean you’ll need to take an extra day of vacation from work, but it’s worth it if you can spare the time. Because let’s face it, wouldn’t you rather be sitting in front of the TV eating leftover turkey and stuffing with your family than sitting in an uncomfortable airport chair waiting for an opening on the stand-by list?

>> In 2012, Thanksgiving is on Thursday, November 22
>> Learn more about Thanksgiving travel deals

Worst Days to Travel at Thanksgiving

The easiest dates to rule out when you’re planning your Thanksgiving holiday travel are the ones where it’s routinely bad – make that abysmal – to be at an airport. By far the worst days to travel at Thanksgiving are the day before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after the holiday.

This shouldn’t be surprising, as everyone’s waiting until the last minute to get out of town and fly back to Mom and Dad’s – and then everyone’s making a beeline for the airport to get home again in time for Monday morning meetings (or just to get the heck out of the in-law’s guest room).

What might surprise you are other days around Thanksgiving that may not be the worst, but can still be pretty awful. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving (in other words, the day before the worst day to fly home) can be bad, especially in the latter half of the day, and even early flights on Thanksgiving morning can make for long lines at check-in and security. To make matters worse, the folks flying on Thanksgiving morning are bound to be the ones who are irritated they have to go home for the holiday at all, so the crankiness factor could be elevated even more than normal.

Another day that’s less-than-fabulous to fly is the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s likely that all the emphasis over the years on the Sunday following Thanksgiving being so bad has led to some people shifting their plans to go home a day early, which is now (of course) making traveling on that Saturday more unpleasant than it used to be.

>> If you’re traveling over Thanksgiving, be sure to read up on these Thanksgiving travel tips so as avoid going slowly insane at the airport.

Best Days to Travel at Thanksgiving

The so-obvious-it’s-stupid statement here is that if you can travel outside the busiest travel days, the chances that you won’t hate your family for forcing you to come home over the holidays are exponentially higher. So, what are the best days to travel over Thanksgiving?

Unfortunately for those of us with jobs or schedules to keep, the best days to travel would require something like a 7-10 day holiday. You’d need to fly out a week before Thanksgiving and fly back the Tuesday after the holiday in order to truly avoid the crowds. But if you don’t have that kind of time to spare, you can still choose days that are somewhere between “normal” and “chaotic” at the airport.

The Sunday or Monday before Thanksgiving are both good days to fly out, and the day after the holiday (Friday) or the Monday after the holiday are good options for flying back. And if you’re really into cutting it close, you can even consider flying out later on Thanksgiving day itself – assuming your family either eats their holiday meal very late or doesn’t care that you’ve missed the feast.

>> Traveling on these “best days” will help you save money on your ticket, but here are more tips to help you find cheap airfare at Thanksgiving.

Airline Cutbacks Mean Fewer Holiday Flights

With the recent and thoroughly un-appetizing economic news lately, airlines have been cutting back – sometimes quite dramatically – on the number of flights they’re running on some routes, and this is likely to continue even during more typically busy travel times.

In other words, even if your airport has more flights around Thanksgiving than they do in early November this year, it’s probably quite a drop from the number of flights they had at Thanksgiving last year.

What this means for Thanksgiving travelers is that those Thanksgiving flights are likely to fill up even more quickly than they ordinarily might. The worst days to fly will be even more unspeakably crowded, and the best days to fly may feel like they’ve morphed into the worst days.

All of this adds up to mean you’d best get your Thanksgiving flights booked ASAP.

>> If you want to expand your search for Thanksgiving flights, be sure to check alternate airports for the big US hubs.

photo by Thirteen of Clubs