Record High Thanksgiving Air Travel Amid Strong US Consumer Spending

On Sunday, the last day of the US Thanksgiving holiday, the number of air travelers in the United States reached an all-time high for a single day.

According to the daily tally by the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) cited by the WSJ on the 2nd, a total of 3,087,393 people passed through airport security checkpoints across the US on the 1st, marking a record high. The previous record was 3,013,622 people on July 7th, the last Sunday of the Independence Day holiday on July 4th this year.

It is estimated that road traffic also saw a significant increase. The American Automobile Association (AAA) forecasted that a total of 79.9 million people would travel to different regions during the week from the 26th of last month to the 2nd of this month, ahead of Thanksgiving on the 28th. This is an increase of 1.7 million people compared to the same period last year.

As the US economy maintains steady growth centered on strong consumer spending, it is interpreted that travel demand remains robust along with consumer expenditure. According to a survey by Deloitte last month, about half of Americans said they have travel plans between this year’s Thanksgiving and mid-January next year. Additionally, one in five respondents planned to travel by air during either the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays this year.

Sales on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), which can gauge the performance of US retailers during the year-end shopping season, have already reached record highs. Earlier, Adobe’s marketing data analytics service, Adobe Analytics, analyzed that US e-commerce sales on Black Friday this year amounted to $10.8 billion (approximately 15 trillion won), an increase of $1 billion (10.2%) compared to last year. This is more than double the amount in 2017 ($5 billion).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.