Conditions were mostly pleasant this year for travelers flying before and after Christmas, but travelers flying on Southwest Airlines were once again plagued by some naughty disruptions.
For millions of people who traveled during the holidays, this year was much better than last year. Christmas morning put a cap on a relatively smooth weekend.
By Monday afternoon, only 138 flights within, into or out of the U.S. had been canceled and 1,366 had been delayed, according to tracking website FlightAware.
For this holiday season, U.S. airlines have been preparing for huge waves of travelers by hiring thousands of pilots, flight attendants and other staff — in an effort to avoid the delays and cancellations that marred travel in 2022, culminating in the Southwest Airlines debacle that more than 2 million people.
Yet Southwest again experienced problems this weekend that the airline wanted to resolve by Monday. Only 2% of the airline's flights were canceled on Monday, although 12% were delayed, for a total of 524 flights, according to FlightAware.
On Saturday and Sunday, Southwest canceled 426 flights and delayed 2,689 flights, FlightAware data showed.
A Southwest spokesman blamed dense fog in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday for preventing planes from landing, and said some additional cancellations may be necessary on Monday ahead of what is expected to be a full recovery on Tuesday.
Auto club AAA predicted that 115 million people in the US would travel at least 50 miles from home by plane or car between Saturday and New Year's Day. That is 2% more than last year.
More than 2.6 million people were screened by the Transportation Security Administration on Thursday, according to TSA data. Data from the weekend has not yet been released.
A record number of people traveled through US airports over Thanksgiving, surpassing pre-COVID numbers in 2019 with a single-day record of 2.9 million people screened by TSA on Sunday, November 26.
Compared to last year's holiday season, milder weather has helped keep air travel schedules on time.
But on the ground, road conditions were dangerous in parts of the country on Christmas Day, thanks to the accumulation of snow and ice in the Midwest and Great Plains. Most of Nebraska and South Dakota experienced snowstorms, and parts of eastern North and South Dakota experienced ice storms, according to the National Weather Service.
According to transport data provider INRIX, the busiest days on the road would be Saturday, December 23 and next Thursday, December 28.