The CDC warned against Thanksgiving travel. Here’s what we know about Idahoans’ plans
Government warnings asking Americans not to fly for the Thanksgiving holiday because of rising coronavirus cases appear to have done little good.
Between Friday and Monday, 4 million airline passengers passed through U.S. airport checkpoints, according to statistics from the Transportation Security Administration. They make up the largest crowds since the pandemic reached a crisis in mid-March, though the traffic is less than half of the 9.3 million passengers who traveled on the same days a year ago.
The Boise Airport, where 2020 passenger numbers have been off 50% from a year ago, is seeing an increase in people flying in and out, spokesperson Sean Briggs said.
“Based upon historical passenger volumes, national trends, and what we’re seeing at the Boise Airport we believe travel has slightly increased because of the Thanksgiving holiday,” Briggs said by email.
It’s hard to know exactly how airlines serving Boise will fare during the holiday. They’re not talking.
“While we don’t have numbers to share publicly, we remain cautiously optimistic during this year’s holiday travel season,” Southwest Airlines spokesperson Dan Landson said by email.
Southwest serves eight cities from Boise, including Denver, Las Vegas, Oakland, Phoenix and San Diego.
A spokesperson for Alaska Airlines declined to comment, and United Airlines did not reply to an email.
The airport does not receive reports on passenger numbers from the airlines until the following month. And the TSA numbers are not broken down by individual airports.
“We are not providing airport-specific statistics,” Lorie Denkers, a TSA spokesperson, said by email. “We are only providing national numbers of people screened.”
AAA Oregon-Idaho expects 266,000 Idahoans will travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. That’s a 10% drop from last year, spokesperson Matthew Conde, based in Boise, said by phone.
“We expect 95% of those trips will be by car and pretty much the remaining 5% to be by air, because the cruise industry is still locked down,” Conde said. “And people aren’t really that comfortable with the idea of a long ride on a bus or train right now.”
The high number of people traveling by air the past few days likely reflects the ability of people who have been working at home to get away early and continue to work remotely before Thanksgiving, Conde said.
“I think what you saw there was a lot of people who had committed already to flying, getting the early jump this year,” he said. “We saw quite a bit more activity, but for the overall picture we’re still projecting that air travel is going to be cut in half compared to the volume we saw last year.”
Nationally, AAA projects 50 million people will travel for Thanksgiving, down from 55 million last year. The projections came before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued recommendations against holiday travel.
The projected decline would end an 11-year streak of Thanksgiving travel growth, Conde said.
“It will be the lowest number of travelers since the Great Recession,” between 2007 and 2009, he said.
Thanksgiving comes as the number of coronavirus cases has surged in the United States. More than 3.3 million cases have been reported since the beginning of November, the largest number reported in a single month.
Idaho reported 1,336 new coronavirus cases, a daily record, on Monday. Ada County reported 239 new confirmed cases on Monday, bringing the countywide total to 20,654 people infected, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
Twenty new COVID-19-related deaths were reported on Monday, bringing the statewide death toll to 868.
This story was originally published November 24, 2020 at 1:27 PM.
