Despite Slowing Economy, Airline Travel Not Expected to Drop This Holiday Season

The economy has been struggling in recent months and fuel prices have been increasing. For this reason many were speculating that airline travel would be down this holiday season. That is not the case according to a recent study by the Air Transport Association of America. This year's holiday travel season for airlines runs from December 13th through January 2nd. It is expected that 47 million passengers will travel during that time frame. The heaviest travel days will have over 2.5 million passengers daily, with the slowest in that period expected to have 1.9 million passengers daily. This is according to a recent press release from the Air Transport Association of America.

"Despite signs of slowing in the economy and sky-high energy prices, we expect to see another strong season of holiday air travel - on average, 2.25 million travelers per day," commented Air Transport Association of America President and CEO James C. May.

The average is slightly skewed as there will be four days during the holiday season that are expected to be well above average for passenger volume and two days that will be well below. The busiest days of the holiday season for airlines are expected to be December 21, 26, 27, and January 2nd according to the press release. Airline traffic for these four days should average over 2.5 million passengers per day according to the Air Transport Association Of America. The slowest days of the holiday season are expected to be December 24 and December 25. These days are expected to only average 1.9 million passengers using air travel options.

The airlines are preparing for this heavy transportation period during the holiday season. They are using technology to increase convenience levels for their passengers. Many airlines will send updates to wireless devices for their passengers up to 24 hours before their flight's departure time. They also are using announcements in multiple languages on screens in the airport. Some airlines are even going as far as sending their flight status updates via text messaging to assist those that have that feature on their cell phones or PDA devices.