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Thanksgiving travel is far exceeding initial estimates, as millions of pandemic-weary Americans take to the skies, roads and rails to reunite with their families despite dire warnings from public health officials in the coronavirus pandemic.
At noon on Tuesday, data from FlightRadar24 showed 6,972 planes crisscrossing the U.S., slightly down from last year but even more than at the same time and day in 2018. The U.S. flights on Tuesday accounted for 65 percent of worldwide planes in the air, up from less than half each of the last two years.
Nearly a million people have traveled by plane on every day since the holiday travel season began on Friday, according to screening data from the Transportation Security Administration.
Based on that data, an estimated 6.3 million Americans will travel by plane for Thanksgiving, blowing past the AAA estimate of 2.4 million issued earlier this month. AAA also projected 48 million would travel by car, and 350,000 by train, just a 10 percent overall decline from last year.
It comes as the pandemic surges across the country, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pleading with Americans not to travel for the holiday, in order to limit the spread of the virus.
On Monday, the seven-day rolling average of daily coronavirus deaths nationwide topped 1,500 for the first time since May 14, according to CDC data.
The crowds are only expected to grow. Next Sunday is likely to be the busiest day of the holiday period.
To be sure, the number of people flying for Thanksgiving is down by more than half from last year because of the rapidly worsening outbreak. However, the 3 million who went through U.S. airport checkpoints from Friday through Sunday marked the biggest crowds since mid-March, when the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the United States.
Many travelers are unwilling to miss out on seeing family and are convinced they can do it safely. Also, many colleges have ended their in-person classes, propelling students to return home.
Laurie Pearcy, director of administration for a Minneapolis law firm, is flying to New Orleans to attend her daughter's bridal shower and have a small Thanksgiving dinner with her son.
'I don't want to unknowingly make anyone sick. But I also don´t want to miss this special event for my only daughter,' she said.
Stephen Browning, a retired executive from Tucson, Arizona, will be flying to Seattle for Thanksgiving with his sister. The celebration usually has up to 30 people; this year only 10 are coming, and everyone was asked to get a coronavirus test. He doesn't plan on removing his mask to eat or drink on the flight.
'This is my first flight since December 2019, so yes, I have concerns,' he said. 'But I think most airlines are acting responsibly now and enforcing masks on all flights.'
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans not to travel or spend the holiday with people outside their household.
New cases of the virus in the U.S. have rocketed to all-time highs, averaging more than 170,000 per day, and deaths have soared to over 1,500 a day, the highest level since the spring. The virus is blamed for more than a quarter-million deaths in the U.S. and over 12 million confirmed infections since March.
'There is so much community transmission all over the United States that the chances of you encountering somebody that has COVID-19 is actually very, very high, whether it's on an airplane, at the airport or at a rest area,' said Dr. Syra Madad, an infectious-disease epidemiologist for New York City hospitals.
The nation's top infectious-diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CBS´ Face the Nation that people at airports 'are going to get us into even more trouble than we´re in right now.'
The message may be sinking in for some.
Bookings in 2020 are down about 60 percent from where they were this time last year. Thanksgiving reservations were ticking upward in early October but fell back again as case numbers surged.
Since airlines have made it easier to cancel tickets, there could be a rash of cancellations closer to the holiday, said John Elder, an adviser to airlines from Boston Consulting Group.
