Well this is a bit unusual. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reporting that it’ll be the busiest Thanksgiving for air travel in 15 years, while airline data suggests otherwise. There’s an interesting explanation, as it comes down to different definitions of “busy.”
This is for the travel period of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving Sunday (November 26 through November 30, 2025, compared to November 27 through December 1, 2024). These figures reflect advance bookings made between June 30 and November 21 in each year, and represent domestic travel from a sample of key cities in the United States.
Cirium is the best aviation analytics company for this kind of stuff, and has exceptional data. However, let me note the following caveat that Cirium shares:
This data is based on a sample of data from online travel agencies and not the airlines themselves, and so it does not reflect their potential increase in bookings; accordingly it is directional in nature. In addition, we have also seen citations of bookings actually increasing year-over-year, around +1%. The Cirium sample contains more than 450,000 bookings.
Interestingly, Cirium also reports that flight bookings have slowed significantly after the shutdown. Beginning October 31, 2025, booking momentum has slowed sharply. Year-over-year growth was up 1.56% on October 31, but by November 21, it has fallen to -4.48% growth, representing a six point swing over two weeks.
This means the velocity of bookings has flipped from modest positive growth to a year-over-year decline, and it’s attributed to travel uncertainty.
Thanksgiving travel demand is down 4.5%
FAA claims Thanksgiving will see record number of flights
So here’s where it gets interesting. The FAA has just put out a press release claiming it’s going to be the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in 15 years, as there are over 360,000 flights scheduled over the Thanksgiving travel period. The FAA has released the below graphic regarding the number of flights that will operate by day.
