US major airlines gear up for busy end-of-year travel period

Major US carriers expect a busy end-of-year holiday travel season and record passenger figures, topping last year as well as last month’s Thanksgiving holiday period. Delta said on 13 December that it expects to carry “nearly 9m” customers during the period beginning on 21 December through 7 January. Peak travel days will be 21-22 December and 26-30 December, the airline says. For comparison, during the 10 days around Thanksgiving long holiday weekend at the end of November, the airline carried 6.4m passengers, it says. United Airlines, meantime, is expecting around 9m passengers, up 12% from the same holiday travel period – which it defines as 17 December through 8 January - last year. On average, the Chicago-headquartered airline will operate nearly 4,000 flights daily, it said on 12 December. “United expects more people will travel for the Christmas holiday than did for Thanksgiving, the carrier says. “On average, more than 455,000 people will fly United per day between Dec. 22-28, which is about 4% more travelers than what we saw between Nov. 20-26.” During the end-of-year holidays a year ago, a series of storms caused major headaches for air traffic across the country. Most airlines recovered quickly but Southwest Airlines – the nation’s fourth-largest carrier – was hamstrung for days by its ageing IT infrastructure an systems which, at one point, had lost track of crews and aircraft.<br/>