RICHMOND, Va. -- Despite a lull in holiday travel Tuesday following the rush leading to Christmas, AAA is reporting the highest travel numbers nationwide in over 20 years.
"We’re not done with holiday travel by any stretch," said AAA Mid-Atlantic Spokesperson Morgan Dean. "When we’re talking about traveling, we’re looking at 115 million people overall across the United States traveling for the holidays with about 7.5 million of them traveling by air which is the highest air travel that we’ve ever seen since we started tracking back in 2000."
Dean says the spike is an indication of would-be travelers having more confidence in destination vacations in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic.
"2020 was a year where we saw a lot of people couldn't travel, but by 2021 we started to see the vaccine rollout and we saw people starting to feel more comfortable about where they were with COVID, but there were still a lot of restrictions," said Dean
Dean says 2022 saw a lot of the issues with COVID, but by 2023 he says people felt that they were back to where they were pre-pandemic encouraging more people to finally get on those trips that they had been waiting for and dreaming about over the past couple of years.
According to AAA, it's typical that within the 10-day December travel season between the 23rd and January 1 for airports and roadways to be less congested in the days immediately following Christmas because the majority of travelers have already made it to their vacation destinations.
Overall, 3.2 million Virginians traveled for the holiday season. About 90% of travelers or 2.85 million people are expected to travel by car while 178,000 are expected to travel by air during the end-of-year holiday travel season.
"As people are trying to return home after New Years on New Years Day, that also expected to be a very busy day too," said Dean. " Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are kind of lower volume days.
According to TSA checkpoint data, AAA says an all-time record was set on the Sunday following Thanksgiving with more than 2.9 million people processed.
On December 21, TSA processed more than 2.65 million people. 2.7 million people were processed on the 22nd and an additional 2.6 million people were processed on the 23rd.
Dean says though travel will be light over the next few days, now that people have arrived at their holiday destinations, travelers can expect another spike, especially on the roads coming up on the 28th.
"Some of that is related to people driving to the destination. For New Year’s some of it is for people coming back home between the holidays after celebrating Christmas at a destination other than home," said Dean.
As the new year approaches, Dean says your best bet to avoid congestion on the road is to plan ahead and leave early in the morning and later in the afternoon to beat the holiday rush.
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