Holiday Travel Days to Avoid

It is well-known that Thanksgiving and Christmas-time see more people traveling around America than at any time of year. Most people would prefer to avoid holiday travel altogether, and holiday air travel in particular. However, the demands of family often make this unavoidable. Few people have the luxury of giving the Holidays a wide berth by arriving long before and departing long after the peak periods, but it is still possible to minimize the misery of clogged roads, canceled flights and jam-packed airports.

Thanksgiving

For fliers, the day before and the last day of Thanksgiving weekend are days to avoid at all costs. The FAA says that Thanksgiving Sunday is routinely the busiest day of the year in terms of air traffic, making it a particularly awful time to be flying. Thanksgiving Friday is almost as bad, and the weekend before Thanksgiving and "Turkey Day Saturday" are just plain ugly.

Driving is a different story, with with AAA predicting that November 24th and 28th will be the absolute worst days to drive. Paradoxically, this is due to the large number of people getting a head start and trying to beat the crowds. Thanksgiving Day itself is also a bad time to be on the roads, due to the large number of people who need to make multiple family events.

In 2009, this means that you should not travel on November 25th or 29th, the two worst days for the Thanksgiving Holidays. You should also avoid air travel for the 21st, 22nd, 27th and 28th.

Christmas and New Years

Deepening winter weather coupled with the primacy most people place on Christmas over Thanksgiving make it a much bigger tangle for travelers. A lot depends, however, on how the calender plays out. If New Year's Day is on a Tuesday, many will treat it as an extra long weekend. That would make Wednesday the 2nd a truly awful day to be either on the roads or in the air as everyone returns at the same time. However, all these people will leave on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday of the week before, spreading that crowd out.

Some days are routinely bad for travel, however. December 23rd, 24th, 27th, 31st and January 2nd can always be counted upon to be bad days either on the roads or in the airport. The only question about these days is "how bad?" and travel on them should be avoided if possible.

In 2009, the placement of Thursday the 24th, Sunday the 27th and Sunday, January 3rd make them the main days to avoid holiday flying.

Sources: abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3911122; independenttraveler.com/resources/article.cfm?AID=522&category=13; cheapticketlinks.org/Holiday-Travel/best-and-worst-days-to-travel-for-thanksgiving.html;