The next week will see US Airlines come under tremendous pressure as the rush home for Thanksgiving on Thursday the 23rd November starts. Operations teams at every major airline will be looking at the weather forecast hoping for no unexpected changes in conditions and the FAA will be sweating on their IT systems staying up to avoid any blackouts. By Wednesday evening most travellers should have reached their destinations and aircraft will be bedding down for their usual evening’s rest, and the next day will be a quieter than normal day of operation for nearly everyone.
The popular perception is that Thanksgiving, and indeed many such holidays, create a rush in demand, which they do, and an increase in supply, which isn’t always the case. The Thanksgiving holiday is one of the better examples of that, but such weeks are not necessarily the busiest overall. In the chart below we can see the weekly US domestic capacity for the two weeks before Thanksgiving week and the actual…
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