Following record-breaking air travel in the United States during Thanksgiving, airlines are preparing for even more passenger traffic this Christmas season.
AAA predicts over 7.5 million passengers will take to the air over the Christmas and New Year’s travel period. If accurate, this would beat the previous record of 7.3 million passengers set in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to CBS News Texas, American Airlines alone expects close to two million passengers between December 20 and January 8.
American Airline’s Senior Vice President Jim Moses says they’ve been adding new hires to prepare for the busy travel period.
“And that our team members, either on board aircraft on the ground, folks that look after our aircraft, our tech ops team, our customer service agents, our fleet service agents, really all of the team members we have been hiring really throughout the year to make sure we are staffed and ready to go this holiday period,” Moses said, per CBS.
He also says the company is investing in new technology expected to help alleviate operational challenges.
“We also have technology that we use in some key areas to ensure that we are managing our operation really to the best of our ability and doing it better than any of our competitors.”
If you plan on traveling this holiday season, Moses recommends arriving 90 minutes early for domestic flights and two hours before international departures.
He said his teams are ready to handle any possible weather-related disruptions over the busy holiday period.
“It’s all about how we’ve prepared for those disruptions, the plan we built and how the team goes and executes on those plans,” Moses told CBS.