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.”
Thanksgiving travel bookings down 4.5% year-over-year
Aviation analytics company Cirium has analyzed flight booking data in advance of the Thanksgiving 2025 travel period, and has compared it to 2024. The data has revealed that Thanksgiving travel bookings are down 4.48% compared to last year.
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.
Let me also emphasize that Cirium is no way politically biased when it comes to the data it shares, before someone tries to suggest this is some sort of a political hit job, pushing a certain agenda. The company always shares its unbiased data on travel trends, no matter what narrative they favor.
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.
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.
So it seems pretty clear what’s going on here — this will be a record breaking Thanksgiving in terms of the number of commercial flights that are operated, while actual travel demand will be down. So yeah, it’ll be record breaking only in terms of the number of planes operating, and not in terms of the number of passengers.
I imagine that the primary explanation here is that airlines were expecting it to be super busy, but the shutdown caused many people to make other plans, and avoid traveling for Thanksgiving, given the uncertainty. After all, the shutdown happened during the busiest period for Thanksgiving flight bookings.
With that in mind, I guess this is a double edged sword — you can expect quite a bit of congestion at airports in terms of potential air traffic control delays (given the number of planes operating), while the actual flying experience should be pleasant, with airports not being as crowded as usual, flights having empty seats, etc.
Bottom line
It’s going to be an interesting Thanksgiving for air travel, as we’re going to see a record number of flights operate, while actual passenger demand is expected to be down somewhere around 4.5%. If this all ends up playing out as expected, that means it could actually be a pretty civilized Thanksgiving travel season, with airports not that crowded, and maybe even some empty seats on planes.
What do you make of these Thanksgiving travel trends?
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