Flying on Thanksgiving is awful. It’s like getting stuck in a rush-hour subway for four hours. In July. With a freelance saxophonist. It’s like a red-eye dental cleaning. It’s like constantly coming home to discover your dog peed all over your laundry. The best you can do is dress warmly, drink water, hide under your Bose headphones, get a window seat and hope you can sleep for the totality of the trip.
Well, that’s our position. Actual industry experts say there’s one more thing you can do to reduce your chances of trouble come Thanksgiving week travel: Choose your airline wisely — for example, choose Hawaiian, the airline most likely to avoid delays according to an industry survey.
Chances are, you’re stuck with what you’re stuck with, or your points-allegiance prevents experimentation. After all, we’d probably all love to fly Hawaiian — ideally to the islands, rather than away from — this holiday season. It’s the number one airline on this survey of delay-avoidant airlines.
Other airlines on RewardExpert’s Thanksgiving Holiday Air Travel Forecast, in order: Delta, Alaskan, Virgin America, United, American, JetBlue, SkyWest, Southwest and Frontier.
Realistically, most of us are going to choose our flights by price and schedule, and hope for the best. Maybe if you’re choosing between Delta and Frontier, you have a little bit more information to work with. But if you’re accruing miles on Frontier, you’re probably going to stick with them regardless.
We’ll be on American, satisfied in our middle-of-the-pack position and hoping for the upgrade we definitely, definitely will not get — and even if we do, the ex-US Air plane will be so lousy that biz class is basically economy-minus on any competitor.
We’ll stop complaining about holiday travel on January 2. When we’re safe at home, and planning our President’s Day vacation.
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