Summer may be over, but Dallas travelers want to take one last vacation before school starts again.
The Transportation Security Administration is preparing for the busiest Labor Day ever. From Thursday to Wednesday, more than 17 million people will be screened nationwide. On Friday, the TSA expects the most passenger screenings, namely 2.86 million people.
“People are traveling more this summer than ever before, and TSA, along with our airline and airport partners, are ready to end the busiest summer travel season on record this upcoming Labor Day weekend,” said TSA Director David Pekoske.
Prices have also dropped during holiday seasons this year. Flights to Dallas cost an average of $180 round-trip, and domestic flights from Dallas cost an average of $194. Hayley Berg, chief economist at travel app Hopper, said airline demand is no longer greater than the number of available seats, which has led to lower airfares.
“Labor Day capacity is only up 2.4% compared to the entire month of July, which was up 6%,” Berg said. “They are trimming back capacity a little bit, but I wouldn’t be concerned about that. It’s not going to lead to an immediate price increase.”
In 2022, she explained, demand was too high and there were not enough seats to book. Airlines had overcorrected and now competition had emerged between traditional airlines and low-cost carriers, driving prices down even further.
Looking ahead to the second half of 2024, they believe the “final correction” will occur and airlines will return to a more traditional, slower pace of capacity expansion.
“In the future, consumers will behave more similarly to pre-pandemic bookings with their advance bookings, so we will reach some kind of equilibrium,” Berg said.
The Bank of America Institute reported that travel spending growth has also cooled, falling 1.1% year-on-year from January through mid-August. But that doesn’t mean passengers aren’t traveling anymore. Passenger traffic is at its highest level in five years.
DFW International Airport expects 1.4 million passengers Thursday through Tuesday, up 6.4% from last year’s Labor Day weekend. That’s 9,839 flights in and out of the airport during the same period, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. Hopper ranks it as the third busiest airport over the holiday weekend and the fifth most booked destination on the app.
Fort Worth-based American Airlines expects 3.8 million passengers on nearly 36,000 flights Thursday through Tuesday, up nearly 14 percent from last year. The airline’s busiest days are Thursday and Friday, when American operates 6,400 flights daily.
According to Cirium, Dallas Love Field has 286,593 seats available for departures and arrivals at North Texas Airport from Thursday through Tuesday. That’s 1,819 flights, mostly on Southwest Airlines, but also some flights on Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Southwest expects 1.9 million passengers from Friday to Monday. Friday and Monday are considered peak days with over 4,100 scheduled flights per day and 565,000 passengers per day.
Christie Hudson, travel expert at Expedia, said her top tip for travelers is to try to avoid these peak days.
“Friday and Monday are the times when most people leave for the weekend, whether they’re heading to the airport or hitting the road,” Hudson said. “To save time, leave on Thursday if possible.”
