The federal government shutdown, and especially last week's flight capacity cuts and air travel chaos, took a substantial bite out of Thanksgiving travel demand.
According to data compiled by Cirium, flight bookings for Thanksgiving weekend were down 3.3% compared to last year as of Nov. 14. The analysis compared bookings made from June 30 through Nov. 14 for travel Nov. 26 to 30. Cirium looked only at domestic travel from a sample of 21 large U.S. airports.
The analysis showed that as of Oct. 31, Thanksgiving bookings were up 1.6% from last year. But they began declining thereafter as the narrative about negative impact that the shutdown took hold. The steepest drop occurred between Nov. 7 and Nov. 14, after the FAA imposed cutbacks in flight operations and as a spike in air traffic controllers call-outs sent cancellation rates soaring to around 10% on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10.
Cancellation figures dropped steadily beginning Nov. 11, after the Senate reached a compromise that led to the end of shutdown on Nov. 13. The FAA lifted the airspace restrictions on Nov. 17.
Cirium noted that booking comparisons vary widely by airport. For example, bookings from Austin for the four days around Thanksgiving were up 30.7% year over year, while bookings from Washington Dulles were down 22.6%.