Holiday Travelers Will Have Lots of Company : Travel: John Wayne Airport braces for record crowds beginning Wednesday. Freeways will also be inundated.

Empowered by bargain air fares and moderate gasoline prices, Thanksgiving weekend travelers are expected to clog Southland airports and freeways in record numbers this year.

Orange County’s John Wayne Airport is braced for overflowing parking lots, rental car agencies could run low on their supply of cars and last-minute travelers may be shocked to find out how much flights will cost--if they can get them at all.

“I called my travel agent and he told me it would cost $1,370 to fly directly from Orange County to JFK,” said last-minute traveler Shayne Perkins, owner of a silk-screen shop in Irvine. “I said, ‘Oh, my God! That is ridiculous.’ ”

Eventually, she said her travel agent was able to have her fly on different days and from Los Angeles International, instead of John Wayne, which cut the round-trip price to $307. Now Perkins is elated. “For that price, I could take a limo to L.A.!” she said.

No matter where you’re going, no matter how you plan to get there, travel experts’ advice to anyone traveling for the holidays is to be patient and allow extra time.

“It’s going to be a busy year,” said Jeffrey Spring, spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California. Nationally, the auto association is predicting 34 million Americans will travel more than 100 miles this Thanksgiving holiday, more than ever before.

One reason may be that gasoline is still relatively cheap. A gallon of self-service unleaded sold for an average of $1.26 in early November in Orange and Los Angeles counties, up eight cents from last year’s average of $1.17 but down a nickel from $1.31 the year before, according to the Lundberg Survey in Los Angeles.

Once they have their full tank, motorists may find a few obstacles on the road. Police agencies were planning the usual sobriety checkpoints. And the U.S. Border Patrol, which recently reopened its station at San Clemente, is routinely checking cars and trucks for illegal immigrants.

The barriers will be removed so that traffic can become free flowing if the lines of vehicles back up more than a mile--a 15-minute delay--and agents say the two right lanes of the four northbound lanes are usually the fastest moving.

Drivers headed for Las Vegas after Thanksgiving Day may encounter heavy traffic on Interstate 15. Hotel rooms there are already hard to find, in keeping with a three-year trend during the holiday leading up to a 96.3% room occupancy rate in 1993. This year, rooms are expected to be just as scarce.

“Thanksgiving Day weekend has evolved into a leading holiday weekend for Las Vegas,” said Terrence Jicinsky, a marketing researcher for the city’s convention bureau.

Unlike in drought years, the ski slopes should also receive a post-Thanksgiving onslaught. “We probably have the best early snow we have had in several decades,” said Bob Roberts, executive director of the California Ski Industry Assn., a trade group in San Francisco.

Already, Mammoth Mountain has two to five feet of snow and some Big Bear resorts are open as well. “Certainly we will see heavy bookings for the holiday period,” he said.

If holiday airline bookings are any indication, the skies may be as crowded as the roads this weekend.

“I’ve been in business 16 years and this is one of the few years that I can remember there are no spaces left” on jetliners, said agent Robert Buckley of Gould Travel in Irvine.

Buckley said the volume of calls at his agency has increased by a third, up to about 100 daily calls late last week. “They are calling this minute and want to leave for Thanksgiving. I can spend hours just trying to find seats.”

Many travelers booked months in advance to take advantage of a series of air fare sales that swept the airline industry in early fall.

“I think people are buying their tickets earlier now and hoping they’ve got the lowest price,” said agent Richard Goward at Robinsons May Travel at the MainPlace/Santa Ana mall. “But I had a lady who called last week and she couldn’t go away for Thanksgiving because the prices were double or triple the normal rates.”

The worst travel day will likely be Wednesday, a day so busy that Southwest Airlines marketing representatives join in loading luggage and checking in passengers.

“It seems like people have been traveling earlier in the week, but Wednesday is the day we help,” said Cheryl Hoban, an Orange County-based marketing representative for Southwest. Southwest’s 17 outgoing flights from John Wayne were booked for that day.

Still, some air fare bargains cropped up last week as airlines offered deep discounts during the travel lull between Wednesday and Sunday.

Southwest offered a $25 one-way fare on any of its flights, including those from John Wayne, from 4 p.m. Thanksgiving Day to midnight Friday.

United Airline’s new no-frills Shuttle, which does not serve John Wayne Airport, offered a $9.97 promotional fare on 5,600 seats between the Southland and the Bay Area for the period from noon Thanksgiving Day to noon Saturday. Virtually all of the cheap tickets were snapped up the first day they were offered.

“It is a new all-time low and the bargain of the century,” said Thom Nulty, president of Associated Travel Management in Santa Ana. “You can barely get two Big Macs and a Coke for $9.97.”

Even if air travelers are lucky enough to have a discount ticket, finding a parking place at the airport may be another matter.

Parking places are increasingly in short supply at John Wayne as the airport handles more than 6.2 million passengers a year. In May, the airport turned 440 long-term spaces into short-term ones, in order to make room for more people who are dropping off or picking up passengers. To many, those efforts haven’t been much help.

“My friend’s plane was late, but instead of being bored I was ticked off,” said Cindy Bongiovanni of Santa Ana, who had to park in the long-term lot and take a shuttle bus to the main terminal when she couldn’t find a parking place last Thursday. “It’s very inconvenient. I’ve come to this airport about three times in 10 years and I’ve always been able to park in the (main) lot.”

Airport spokeswoman Pat Ware said the crush is coming earlier than normal this year. “People must be starting their vacations early this year--a combination of business and leisure,” she said.

One solution to the parking shortage might be to use the hourly parking lot in front of the main terminal, instead of either of the multistory parking structures on either side of the terminal. The hourly lot costs the same $1 an hour rate as the other two terminals for short-term parking, she said.

Also, passengers may want to drive directly to the long-term parking lot off Main Street, which usually has spaces available, Ware said. Extra buses will be shuttling passengers to the terminal on Wednesday and Sunday, the two busiest travel days.

Some arriving passengers may have their own special set of problems, such as finding a rental car. Rental car agencies say they are expecting a heavy demand in all sizes and types of vehicles.

“We’re seeing double-digit percentage increases in Hertz’s booking activities compared to last year,” said Hertz Rent A Car spokesman Joe Russo in Park Ridge, N.J. “The Thanksgiving travel week is one of the busiest of the year.”

Scott Asplin, manager of the Dollar Rent A Car agency at John Wayne, said travelers should make sure they have reservations. “Most of the rental car (agencies) have tightened down their fleets,” he said. “We have been running out.”