LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Peak holiday travel season is in full swing at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. The busy holiday season runs from Dec. 20, 2021 until Jan. 3, 2022.
This year, despite the pandemic and the Omicron variant, Director of Marketing and Air Service Development at Louisville Regional Airport Authority, Anthony Gilmer, said about 180,000 passengers are expected to fly in and out of Louisville’s international airport this holiday season, which will break the airport’s record from 2019.
With Christmas just around the corner, it’s Haliek Dickerson’s second time flying, ever.
“We are going to Las Vegas. To be honest, I have zero clue what we are going to be doing there,” the 12-year-old told Spectrum News 1 while waiting for his departing fight.
Who does have a clue is Haliek’s great-grandmother, Sandra Dickerson-Fox.
“We are going on a family trip to Vegas. We are in an Airbnb. It’s like 12 to 13 of us, and we are just going to have a family Christmas together,” Dickerson-Fox said.
The 70-year-old said she normally doesn’t travel for the holidays. However, the pandemic has changed what normal looks like, and it’s made this family change how they normally spend Christmas.
“We decided to make this an annual thing. So next year, we will decide while we are here in Vegas, we’ll decide where we’re going to go for Christmas next year,” she explained.
As to the reason why this family decided to change up their Christmas routine, Dickerson-Fox said, “Life is short.”
She also added, “And as I said, I’m the older of all of them, and we just want to be together because we have family coming from New York, as well. So we all want to be together.”
A look at The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint line just after noon on the Wednesday before Christmas, and it’s clear as day Haliek and his family aren’t the only ones who planned to getaway this holiday.
Gilmer, told Spectrum News 1 via email, “Our airline seat capacity is 99% of the same period in 2019, which was our all-time record year.”
It’s important to remember that Muhammad Ali International Airport’s holiday travel period runs from Dec. 20, 2021 until Jan. 3, 2022. So it’s expected that this year will be the highest year on record for holiday travel.”
“There is still a ton of pent up demand from all of that time when people really couldn’t travel,” Gilmer explained during an in-person interview at Louisville’s international airport.
“So there’s a fair amount of people who are kind of going out to see their family and friends for the first time, again,” Gilmer said.
Lower fares compared to years’ past and more nonstop destinations compared to pre-pandemic, Gilmer explained, are also contributing factors as to why the number of holiday travelers going through Louisville airport are back to pre-pandemic numbers.
Haliek, great-grandmother Dickerson-Fox, and some of the other family on the trip aren’t from Louisville, but they drove from Richmond, Va. to fly out of Louisville’s airport.
“My daughter, my granddaughter, my grandson, and my other great-grandson, they are here, and it was less expensive to fly,” Dickerson-Fox said. “We looked at BWI. We looked at Reagan; we looked at Richmond International. They were all the same …$400 less per person to fly out of Louisville then it is out of Virginia.”
Despite more people traveling amid the pandemic and a new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, Dickerson-Fox said she doesn’t have any concerns.
“It is what it is. We are going to do what we need to do to take care of [ourselves]; we’ve all been vaccinated. So Merry Christmas to everybody,” she said.
Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport recommends people get to the airport two hours before their flight in case of longer than normal check-in and TSA lines.
Gilmer said since Christmas falls on a weekend this year, travel leading up to Christmas is not as busy. He said the busiest travel days this holiday will be the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, since people are flying home after Christmas and others are flying to new destinations for New Year’s.
The TSA mask mandate is still in effect until March 18, 2022 when traveling.