Whether by plane or automobile, holiday seekers headed out of metro Atlanta in droves Friday, with nasty weather in other parts of the country clouding some of their travel horizons.
Forecasters predicted that three in 10 Americans will venture at least 50 miles from home this holiday season, with more than 90 percent of them taking to the highways rather than the air.
The AAA 2012/2013 Year-End Holidays Travel Forecast foresees a 1.6 percent bump in the number of travelers compared to last year. That makes 2012 the fourth year of growth, following a 5 percent dip in 2007, when the Great Recession played Grinch.
Grant Park parents Kirk and Jami Sieder set out for Michigan Thursday, trying to beat some of the holiday slog. The Sieders, with two young daughters in tow, will eclipse the average travel distance of 760 miles round-trip.
“We’re heading right into the eye of the blizzard,” Jami Sieder acknowledged, noting that it’s the third year the family has made the pilgrimage.
Luckily for them and thousands of others, Friday brought relief from the blinding snow that caused widespread delays Thursday on highways and at airports throughout the upper Midwest. However, wintry conditions still disrupted operations at airports in cities such as New York and Boston, rippling through the system to cause delays of up to three hours for some flights at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Hartsfield-Jackson expects more than five million travelers to pass through between Dec. 17 and Jan. 6, with the first major surge ending today and a second one beginning around New Year’s Eve.
Passenger counts at the airport were up 3.3 percent for the year through October, on track to top last year’s record of 92.4 million passengers. Just as the holiday period ends, heavy business travel is set to resume Jan. 7.
For those traveling by car, gas prices are not expected to weigh heavily on Americans’ minds, the AAA report found. In Atlanta, some stations have priced gas at just under $3 a gallon in recent days. The national weekly average was $3.25, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
For those, like the Sieders, who are traveling with children, driving may cost less than flying. But a pleasant — or at least tolerable — trip requires a certain amount of forethought.
The Sieders have a strategy. They overnight in Indianapolis and spend the next morning at a children’s museum before driving the final leg to the Great Lakes State.
“We always stay at the same hotel, so there’s this routine and tradition to it,” Jami Sieder said. “Plus, it has an indoor pool, which is big with the kid set.”
For Karen Leff, who travels with her husband Mitch and two sons to St. Louis each Christmas, a vehicle is required to hold their bounty of belongings, notably their dog, Brewster.
The Leffs have a firm routine. The boys wear their traveling clothes to bed as the family will hit the road by 5:30 a.m. Karen Leff packs breakfast supplies and sandwiches. She brings along bottled drinks, not just for spill-prevention, but so they last longer. Oh, and she tries to limit the boys to drinking only when they eat, so as to minimize bathroom breaks.
“It sounds insane, but it saves so much time,” she said.
“I even drive because I feel like Mitch just takes too long,” she continued. “I’m like, how fast can I get from Point A to Point B? And I know every exit that has the closet and cleanest McDonalds.”
For Georgians hitting the road this weekend and beyond, the state Department of Transportation has a little gift. It has suspended interstate roadwork statewide through midnight on Jan. 1.
More good news: The weather across metro Atlanta will be dry over the weekend, although there’s a chance of rain moving back into the area on Monday and Tuesday, according to Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Karen Minton.
About the Author
