Easiest travel day of the year?

Face2face is a blog about planning face-to-face meetings, conferences, conventions, and trade shows, plus business travel and hospitality news.

Sue Pelletier MeetingsNet Web editor, mad blogger, and editor of Association Meetings magazine...more

Easiest travel day of the year?

Sue Pelletier November 29th, 2008

I know the day before Thanksgiving is supposed to be the heaviest of the year, but for my family and I, traveling to visit the in-laws this past week was a snap.

First, we hit zero traffic driving into Boston Logan. We left several hours to spare for our 9:30 am flight, just because, but zoomed right in, found two parking spaces right next to each other and a stone’s throw from the door to the terminal. A TSA agent came up to us as we were perusing the flight board and ushered us through the VIP line, not that there was anyone in the regular security line, so getting through that was nothing. The gate area was empty, the flight not overly crowded, and the Charlotte, N.C., airport was the least crowded I’ve ever seen it.

While heading back last night was a little less of a breeze, it was still nothing compared to the usual business flights I’ve had recently in terms of airport crowds and security lines. That little aspiring soccer player who spent the two-hour flight practicing her sport on the back of my seat, well, I wasn’t quite as thankful for her as I was for the ease of flying, but the whole thing was remarkably stress-free for Thanksgiving travel.

I wonder if people really did stay home in droves this year (or drive instead of flying), or if we just lucked out completely? While it was great for us, I worry that if people truly aren’t flying even to see relatives at the holidays, it doesn’t bode well for that annual convention now, does it?