Airline travel expected to surge 4% over the Labor Day weekend
If you plan to fly over the Labor Day holiday, get ready to labor through huge airport crowds.
During the holiday period from Aug. 31 to Sept. 6, 15.6 million people are expected to fly on U.S.-based airlines, a 4% increase over the same period last year, according to a forecast by Airlines for America, a trade group for the nation’s airlines.
The increase breaks down to 2.23 million air travelers a day, an increase of 82,000 fliers a day, the trade group said.
John Heimlich, chief economist for Airlines for America, attributed the increase to a drop in airfares over the last year and a half.
In the first three months of the year, the average domestic airfare charged by U.S. carriers was $361, a 7.8% decline from the same period in 2015. That decline comes after fares dropped nearly 4% from 2015 to 2016, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is expected to be the busiest airport for the Labor Day weekend, with 1.1 million airline seats on 7,900 flights, followed by Los Angeles International Airport with 930,000 seats on 5,900 flights, according to the trade group.
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