The long Thanksgiving weekend is upon us and it appears that after a lackluster travel weekend last year Missourians will be hitting the road again. Mike Right with AAA Missouri says travel, primarily by vehicle, will be up all over the country.
“Travel throughout the United States is going to be up about 1-and-a-half percent, compared to last year, which was pretty disastrous in terms of travel,” said Right in an interview with the Missourinet. “The majority of those folks, as is usual, will be traveling by motor vehicle. We’re going to have slightly more than 33 million folks that are going to be out and about in their motor vehicles going to grandmother’s house and that’s going to be an increase in motor vehicle travel of about 2.1 percent from what we saw last year.”Right sees a combination of cabin fever and signs of an improving economy as being the reasons for more people traveling. But they’re not heading to the friendly skies.
“Air travel is going to be down this year by almost 7 percent compared to last year,” said Right.
Several factors come into play, including the high cost of air travel, compared to road travel.
“It’s certainly less expensive, by degrees, to travel by motor vehicle if you’re traveling with a family as opposed to traveling by air and paying air fares for four or five people.”
Right expects this year’s average trip to be about 800 miles, round trip.