How to avoid long lines, high prices during Thanksgiving travel

INTERVIEWER: The Twin Cities airport is a busy place today. It's going to get even more crowded before Thanksgiving Thursday. Thanksgiving holiday travel is expected to equal or surpass that seen in 2021. And officials say, pack your patience, because more than 32,000 passengers are expected to clear security checkpoints over the next few days at MSP.

For more, we've called up Kyle Potter, he's the executive editor of the travel website, Thrifty Traveler. Hey, Kyle, welcome back.

KYLE POTTER: Thanks for having me, Cathy.

INTERVIEWER: When someone says to pack your patience, that does not sound positive. What are you hearing about holiday travel?

KYLE POTTER: This is going to be a yet again, and I've said this probably a dozen, 20 times over the last 2 and 1/2 years, this is going to be the busiest time that we've seen since the start of the pandemic in airports, not just MSP, but all around the country, because people are coming out of the woodwork for what feels like to many Americans, the most normal Thanksgiving that we'll have had since 2019.

INTERVIEWER: Which is lovely. But I'm wondering about travel hassles. What are you hearing so far?

KYLE POTTER: You know, lines are going to be out there. Lines happen, not just at airport security lines, but also to check bags. Those are two probably, the biggest pinch points at any airport all around. So that's going to happen.

There are going to be peak travel times because that always happens, in good times and in bad times. So we're heading into this Thanksgiving travel season. And yet again, just as it is every year, flying out on a Wednesday morning or a Wednesday afternoon, which is when most people fly in order to get somewhere for Thanksgiving-- that is going to be a busy time. Every single morning from here all the way through next Sunday is also going to be busy.

But also, this Thanksgiving is going to be a little bit different when it comes to travel. And I think the same is going to be true around the Christmas and New Year's holidays as well in that people have a lot more flexibility to travel at different times, maybe earlier or even later than they would have in years past. So that means we're going to see what's typically a really big peak on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and on Sunday after. And that's going to get stretched out a little bit, which I think is really a positive for the airports and airlines handling this mass amount of traffic that the peaks aren't going to be quite as high as they normally were three years ago.

INTERVIEWER: You know, I'm wondering about the costs. Obviously, we've been seeing airline tickets go up, costs of tickets and that kind of thing. Are there fewer bargains, I'm assuming, than we saw in the last few years?

KYLE POTTER: Know what, we've seen in the last several months is really the script getting flipped in terms of where you can find bargains. Domestic airfare, especially through the end of the year and into early 2023 is sky high in a lot of places. There are still some bargains out there if you're looking to travel somewhere within the United States. But they are fewer and further between.

Where the bargains are increasingly, is abroad, and in particular, over in Europe. I mean, the amount of cheap flights under $400, in some cases under $300 round trip over to Europe is unprecedented in many ways, and in some cases, on par, if not a little bit better, with the crazy town airfare that we saw at the start of the pandemic when airlines couldn't figure out what it would take for people to buy a plane ticket. So there are still bargains out there. As always, it just matters where you look.

INTERVIEWER: So let's talk about travelers, what they may expect at the airport this week coming and going.

KYLE POTTER: You know, I think it's going to be full planes, first and foremost. That's a big piece of why it's gotten so much harder to find a great deal on domestic airfare these days is that airlines are absolutely at capacity. And if airfare is determined by one thing and one thing only, it is the law of supply and demand.

So I would not expect to see an empty row, if even an empty middle seat on any planes heading into this weekend. And you know what? I think there is a little bit of a silver lining-- and I need to knock on wood here-- that this Thanksgiving travel period I think, is going to look a lot better than what we saw over the early summer and in holidays past over the last few years in that airlines really do seem to have figured some things out, learned some lessons from the mass delays and cancellations that we've seen over the last few years, and that with any luck, and especially with the weather cooperating as it looks like it's going to heading into this busy travel season, we're not going to see a repeat of the mass, mass disruptions that we've seen over the last several months and over the last several years as well.

INTERVIEWER: So you wrote about tips for some smoother travel days. Tell us about that.

KYLE POTTER: You know, the single biggest thing-- and it might be too late to book these tickets, certainly-- but if you can change your flights without paying a hefty penalty, you should. And you should change them to the earliest departure that you can, because it's really just logic. The longer the day stretches on, the more problems tend to build up and kind of have a snowball effect.

So as you get into, especially the afternoon and the evening departures, the likelihood of a flight being delayed or canceled really just compounds. So if you can get on that pre-8:00 AM departure, that is the best thing that you can do. Beyond that, avoiding connections whenever possible. While it can definitely save you some money, you may pay for that in the end, because if something does go wrong, the odds that you're going to have a delayed or canceled flight or doubled if you're taking a pit stop in O'Hare or in New York City.

And finally, you know, especially for these shorter trips, don't bother packing a bag. I promise you, you can pack and just to carry on. And the time and stress you're going to save by doing that when you don't need to wait in line to check your bag in or wait at the carousel for if and when your bag actually shows up, it's going to be well, well worth it.

INTERVIEWER: And you do that too, right? You strictly travel with carry-on?

KYLE POTTER: The last time I checked a bag I regretted it immensely, and I won't do it again.

INTERVIEWER: OK. I'll have to remember that. Any advice for travelers not used to busy airports? Because you know, I mean, there are folks who, maybe for some people, this is the first time they're going to get out because of COVID. Any advice about parking and getting there on time or several hours ahead time?

KYLE POTTER: You know, especially here in Minneapolis, there are a couple of good options when it comes to parking. You can actually park downtown in one of the downtown ramps. Which one escapes me, but if you park there, you can ride the light rail in, and you pay a fraction of what you would pay to park on-site at the airport.

If you're parking at the airport, you can reserve in advance and pay a little bit less, as well as park in terminal two, which typically doesn't fill up quite as fast as some of the terminal one ramps. And it's also a little bit less expensive. And finally, when I go to the airport, the first thing that I need is a coffee. And all of the Starbucks locations at the airport now allow you to order ahead of time. And those lines to order coffee at Starbucks at the airport are probably going to be the biggest lines that we see for the next several days. So if you can skip that, that is going to save you a lot of time.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, good advice. By the way, are you going to go anywhere for Thanksgiving?

KYLE POTTER: I am hitting the road, driving up to rural Northwestern Minnesota to spend some time with family. No airports for me this time.

INTERVIEWER: OK, good move. And what about Christmas and the other holidays in the next month here? Do you expect as you say, not the delays and the messes that we saw prior, but you still have weather to contend with and still staffing shortages, I would presume?

KYLE POTTER: Exactly. You know, Christmas and New Year's and the end of the year here is going to be another ball game. And it's going to be largely based on weather and what we see with the travel demand patterns. And I think this Thanksgiving travel week is going to be very telling for what that looks like.

If we do see some bubbles of trouble without bad weather plaguing a certain pocket of the country, that doesn't necessarily portend well for what's going to happen a month from now. So I think we're going to have to wait and see. But like I said, I think we are in a much better place than we were just a few short months ago in terms of just how likely it is that we're going to see significant problems.

INTERVIEWER: All right. Hey, Kyle, always a pleasure. Thanks so much.

KYLE POTTER: Thanks for having me.

INTERVIEWER: Kyle Potter is the executive editor of the travel website, Thrifty Traveler.