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Thanksgiving Travelers Choose Efficient Tracks

Tribune photo by Julie Busch

Steve Gross is greeted by his sons Connor, 6, and Matthew, 3, as they prepare to board an Airtran flight to Philadelphia from Tampa International Airport to visit family for Thanksgiving.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 20, 2007

Updated: 11/20/2007 04:51 pm

TAMPA With Thanksgiving holiday highways jammed and seemingly endless lines of airline travelers bellying up to ticket counters, James Brothers is taking the road less traveled this holiday.

He's trading in expensive airplane seats and the chance to take his shoes off in front of scores of kvetching strangers for coach class on a train. Or maybe he'll get a sleeper car. Or just lounge in the dining car and watch the spectacular scenery go by.

Brothers is one of millions of Americans this week leaving home to spend the holiday with relatives, or cooking at home, expecting out-of-town family for Thursday dinner. Travelers do what they have to do to get to where they are going. Trains, planes and automobiles, and maybe buses, are the basic choices.

Brothers, 37, waited for his connection at Tampa Union Station this morning. There was no line. In fact, only a half-dozen people took up space inside the echo chamber that is the waiting room of the historic brick building on downtown Tampa's east end.

"I'm catching all the family this week," he said just after checking his bag. A banquet room supervisor for a Jacksonville hotel, Brotherrs took the train from his home this past weekend to spend a couple of days with his mother in Tampa. He was taking an Amtrak bus to Orlando today to see his father. From there, he had booked the train to Washington, D.C., where his brother lives, and then another train would take him to Charlotte, N.C., to pop in on his sister.

Phew.

But to make the same travel plans this week through the air would have cost him thousands of dollars, he said. All of his train travel set him back less than $500. All in all, he would spend about 36 hours aboard a train, he said, and that's just fine with him, he said. After all, he shrugged, the train's the way to go.

"It gives you a chance to relax and be comfortable and there are no hassles," he said. "You get to see everything along the way, all the little towns. It's a very good experience.

"And," he said, "it beats all the hustle and bustle of the airport."

A few blocks away, David Myers, 42, waited for his bus at the Greyhound station in downtown Tampa. Certainly, he could afford a flight to Jacksonville, but opted for a Greyhound bus instead. This morning, he sat in the station tapping his laptop, waiting for the bus that would take him to his girlfriend in Jacksonville. From there, the couple had booked a flight to Shreveport, La., to meet her parents.

Myers, a Tampa mortgage broker, said the long bus ride would save him gas money.

"I'm hoping the tradeoff in gasoline will balance out the five-hour ride," he said. That's why he's leaving his gas-guzzling car at home this holiday. "Gas is now, what, $3-plus a gallon?"

Taking the bus was a first for him, he said. The ticket was less than $40. Driving his car there likely would cost him twice that

Destination: Home

Travelers were intent on getting to their destination in the most economical and efficient ways. That's why the Gross family of Tampa decided to take an airplane to Philadelphia.

This morning, Dina and Steve Gross shuffled their four sons, Connor, 6; William, 5; Matthew, 3;and Michael, 7 months, through Tampa International Airport, trading the cost for a chance to get to their destination as quickly as possible.

The trip had a twofold objective, Dina Gross said. The first was to spend Thanksgiving with family and the second, to have Michael christened.

Taking the family on such road trips through the air is not easy, she said. They make the flight about once every two years.

"We go once and it takes a while to recover," she said.

The airport was not too jammed this morning, but periods of activity pop up throughout the day, airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan said.

Sixty flights are scheduled before 9 a.m. each day, she said, and a second cluster of departing flights hits between noon and 2 p.m. A lull follows and then activity picks up again between 4 and 9 p.m., she said. People scheduling flights should try to avoid those time periods to miss the crowds, she said.

The Thanksgiving holiday's big travel days at the airport are Wednesday, Sunday and Monday, she said, when 60,000 arriving and departing passengers are expected each day. As of Tuesday, "Everything was going smoothly," she said. "Even if it seems slow, it's steady."

More flights are available this year compared with November last year, she said. Now, 270 flights depart each day and 270 arrive, compared with 250 daily departing and arriving flights last year, she said.

That's a 7 percent increase in flights and an additional 2,300 seats available each day to top destinations of New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Atlanta, she said.

Although airports across the nation will have the look of being jammed this week with holiday travelers, the U.S. Bureau of Travel Statistics says that most travelers heading out to Thanksgiving dinners typically hop into their own autos and drive.

Ninety-two percent of travelers get where they are going for holiday turkeys by private vehicle. A little more than 5 percent of people on the move go by air and almost 3 percent go by train or bus. Forty-four percent of those who go somewhere for Thanksgiving go less than 100 miles from home, the statistics show, and just more than 2 percent go 1,000 miles or more from home. The average Thanksgiving Day distance from home for travelers is 214 miles, statistics show.

Drivers typically wait until Thanksgiving Day to head out, the bureau reported, when motorists on journeys of less than 100 miles make more than 16 million trips. More than 10 million holiday revelers driving more than 100 miles will be on the road Thursday.

The focus, though, always seems to be on the airports.

Airports all across the country are at times jam-packed with people and flight delays are a natural result. So people meeting travelers at the airport should check arrival times. Tampa's airport ranks among the top five in the nation for on-time departure performance, so flight delays leaving here are not a problem.

Flight delays in faraway cities, though, may affect arrival times here. A third of all of the nation's delayed flights occur in New York, the most popular destination to and from Tampa.

For local flight information, log on to Tampa International Airport's Web site, tampaairport.com. The Web site www.faa.gov also has real-time information on flights and delays across the country.

If You're Headed To The Airport

Holiday travelers leaving Tampa by air this week can expect a few differences from Thanksgivings past, such as higher parking fees and the construction obstacle course along the airport's entrance.

Daily parking rates now range from $9 a day for the economy lot to $25 for valet parking. Construction on the airport roadways and interchanges also is a hassle. The overflow parking lots are available for a flat rate of $10 but only after all 20,000 permanent spaces are filled.

Security changes have been made since a year ago. Small lighters no longer are banned as carry-on items, but torch lighters remain prohibited. The 3-1-1 carry-on rules apply: 3-ounce bottles or less for liquids, gels and aerosols; one quart-size, clear plastic, zip-top bag to hold small bottles; one bag per passenger placed in the screening bin.

The Transportation Security Administration said the screening of passengers, long thought to be the logjam in the system, has streamlined itself.

A travel advisory on the agency's Web site said that from Nov. 15 to 18, 7.87 million people were screened at the nation's top 40 airports, and more than 97 percent of passengers were screened in 20 minutes or less. The agency reported that 81 percent of passengers were screened in 10 minutes or less.

Still, the agency said, passengers should arrive early enough to accommodate problems that may arise. Most delays at security checkpoints can be eliminated by following a few simple rules:

Boarding passes and identification cards should be out and ready for inspection.

Bulky coats, sweaters and other bulky items make for difficult screening.

Shoes or boots with laces or other fasteners that are difficult to remove and put back on also are a security checkpoint hindrance.

Laptops and other oversized electronics should be pulled out of bags.

Loose change, keys and other metal objects in pockets usually result in the passenger having to go back through the metal detector, to the groans of all those people in line, waiting patiently with their shoes off.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com

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