Marvin Scott usually gets to the airport about 45 minutes before his flights, but on Wednesday, he arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York two hours early, aware that experts had warned that this Thanksgiving travel week would be the busiest ever. He was pleasantly surprised to find a calm scene as he walked toward the gates for his flight to Puerto Rico. “Now I’ve got to figure out what to do,” he said. Whether people are moving by rail, road or air, the days around Thanksgiving are among the busiest travel days of the year in the United States, and this year is expected to break records. The TSA said it expected to screen 18.3m travelers from Tuesday through Monday — about 6% more than in 2023. Weather challenges across the United States threatened to disrupt those travel plans. The Midwest was expecting a wind chill, while the South and Northeast were expecting a cold, rainy storm system. Snow was also possible in parts of the Northeast. Forecasters on Wednesday issued winter storm warnings for parts of Colorado and Utah, saying that heavy snow there could make travel difficult or impossible. More than 500 flights were delayed at Denver International Airport as snow moved over the area on Wednesday, according to FlightAware. The T.S.A. “is well prepared for this holiday,” R. Carter Langston, a spokesman for the agency, said on Tuesday. Wednesday and Sunday are expected to be the busiest days for air travel, with about 3m travelers expected on each of those days. But even at many of the busiest airports across the country, including major airports in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas and Denver, wait times at security checkpoints were below 15 minutes for most of the day on Wednesday.<br/>
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The average flight today from Kennedy Airport to LAX is slower than it was in 1995 in every conceivable way. Planes face longer delays leaving the gate; take more time taxiing before taking off; and spend more time in the air. But paradoxically, even with an average rise in travel time of 18 minutes, the percentage of flights on this route arriving after the scheduled arrival time has decreased. In 1995, the arrivals were behind schedule 51% of the time; today it’s just 37%. Why do today’s flights arrive early more often, even though they’re slower? Airlines have extended their scheduled flight durations even more than the flights have lengthened in actual duration. The average scheduled duration from J.F.K. to Los Angeles has increased 23 minutes since 1995, according to an Upshot analysis of Bureau of Transportation Statistics data. Thanks to those more forgiving schedules, a majority of domestic flights nationwide arrive early or on time. If your plane reaches the gate at exactly the estimated arrival time, you are actually on a plane that is running slower than usual. For airlines, scheduling the extra time has little downside, while it has the upside of looking good in on-time performance data and avoiding customer scorn. “It’s called padding,” said Chad Kendall, a former commercial pilot and an associate professor of aviation at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He said airlines had plenty of incentives to be on time, especially on paper.<br/>
It’s going to be a big day in the remote capital of Greenland on November 28 when Air Greenland’s flagship Airbus A330-800neo lands from Copenhagen, Denmark at Nuuk International Airport. It will be the first direct flight between the two capitals and the start of an aviation revolution on the world’s largest island. After Nuuk, two more airports are being opened by the end of 2026, part of an $800m investment in infrastructure on the least densely populated nation on the planet. With 57,000 people, it is roughly the same size as Whangārei city. Previously anyone wanting to visit Nuuk had to land 319km north at the former military airport of Kangerlussuaq, and then take a smaller connecting flight to the capital. Kangerlussuaq is so small that each flight nearly doubles the population of the tiny outpost. Jacob Nitter Sorensen, CE of national carrier Air Greenland, said the new airport is a “game changer”. “It’s going to shorten the travel time, and it's going to decrease the cost of producing the flight.” Construction of the new 2200m-long runway at Nuuk started in 2020 and more than 6m cubic metres of rock has been removed. Other airlines are onboard with the new airport. Next year, United Airlines will begin flying from New York, and SAS will offer direct flights between Copenhagen and Nuuk during the peak summer season. Icelandair will also operate larger aircraft from Reykjavik.<br/>
Hong Kong’s third airport runway officially starts operating on Thursday, but there’ll be hardly any additional flight capacity for at least another year. Aircraft movement will grow only up to 4% next summer season — March to October 2025 — according to documents published by the city’s Civil Aviation Department. The slow ramp-up reflects the city’s sluggish aviation recovery after the pandemic. Incumbent airline Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. is not yet back to full strength and the airport is struggling to appeal to major foreign airlines — particularly those who need to fly around Russian airspace, forcing a longer round trip. More broadly, Hong Kong is still suffering a reputational hit from street protests and pandemic policies that set back the economy, tourism and businesses. While overall visitor arrivals to the city is roughly back to the pre-pandemic levels, many people are now coming from mainland China via land or sea. The new runway is “going to be there for a long, long time,” said Vivian Cheung, acting CEO of operator Airport Authority Hong Kong. “We didn’t want to use up this runway all in one or two seasons. Even our base carrier needs time to ramp up its flights.” The transformational effect the HK$141.5b ($18.2b) airport upgrade is meant to have on the Asian financial hub’s economy and tourism industry may therefore take longer to realize. The city has a lot riding on the project in its quest to stay abreast of Singapore as a key regional hub. It “may well be the single most important key of Hong Kong’s sustained success as a leading international aviation hub,” said Deputy Financial Secretary Michael Wong last month. The documents published by the city’s Civil Aviation Department show officials plan to lift total runway capacity to 1,453 take-offs and landings per day by next summer compared to the same period this year. HKIA said the expanded passenger buildings associated with the third runway, will be commissioned in phases from the end of 2025, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.<br/>
South Korea grappled with heavy snowfall for a second day on Thursday, with dozens of flights cancelled, ferry operations suspended and at least four people reported dead in a bitter winter, though conditions showed signs of easing. The winter snowfall was the third-heaviest in Seoul, the capital, since records began in 1907, the Yonhap news agency said, citing data from the city. More than 40 cm (16 inches) of snow piled up in parts of Seoul by 8 a.m., forcing the cancellation of more than 140 flights, although weather officials lifted heavy snow warnings in the capital's metropolitan area by 10 a.m. on Thursday. Seoul's main airport, Incheon, was the worst affected, with passengers facing delays of two hours on average, while 14% of flights were delayed and 15% cancelled on Thursday, plane tracking website Flightradar24 showed. Authorities said about 142 flights were cancelled, and operations of 99 ferries suspended on 76 routes by Thursday, authorities said, while media reported trains were also delayed.<br/>
The 50-year-old cold case of D.B. Cooper may have seen a new development after an amateur sleuth claims to have found the parachute used by the infamous, yet still unidentified plane hijacker. YouTuber Dan Gryder said that he found a modified device matching the one used in the 1971 hijacking on a property in North Carolina, and has handed it over to the FBI. Gryder, who has been looking into the case “off and on” for almost 20 years, said in a video series about his investigation that the rig was “literally one in a billion.” “This is the rig he used... we just solved it,” he says. D. B. Cooper, also known as Dan Cooper, hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 on November 24 1971. During the flight, Cooper told a flight attendant he had a bomb, demanding $200,000 in ransom and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. However soon after taking off again with the intention of heading to Mexico, Cooper opened the aircraft’s door and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. His true identity and whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. Gryder found what he claims is Cooper’s parachute on a property owned by the family of the late Richard McCoy Jr – one of the men considered by the FBI to be a “serious suspect” in the case.<br/>