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It’s been a wild ride over the past few weeks for air travelers around the country. The longest government shutdown in history, which stretched from October into November, forced airlines to cancel a significant number of flights in dozens of their top markets. Now, the holiday season has arrived, and even in the best of circumstances, Thanksgiving week travel plans can be messed up rather easily at the busiest airports.
On top of all that, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is gearing up for a particularly hectic time.
“We expect this Thanksgiving holiday travel period to be the busiest in 15 years, with Tuesday, Nov. 25 being the peak travel day with more than 52,000 flights,” a Nov. 21 FAA press release states.
And of course, folks traveling to and from North Texas via Dallas Fort Worth International Airport should just plan ahead for a wild and woolly time in the terminals.
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DFW Airport is expected to be the third busiest airport in the U.S. this week, according to travel app Hopper.
In a separate Hopper travel report, the site’s lead economist backs up what the FAA expects to be a busy and bustling time for travel that stretches past Thanksgiving.
“According to the research, the majority of Americans are expecting to travel for the holidays this year, with 74% of Americans traveling for Christmas and 61% traveling for Thanksgiving this year,” the report states.
We’re not sure that saying it’s going to be busy at DFW Airport is especially newsworthy to many of our local readers. It’s a gargantuan city unto itself with a hard-earned rep for headaches, wait times and long walks to get to your gate. However, we recognize that not everyone who visits our site has the same institutional knowledge that seasoned North Texas travelers possess about DFW, so here it is.
It was just a few months ago that the airport touted its recognition as the third busiest airport in the world, not simply in the country.
“More than 87.8 million customers traveled through DFW last year – an increase of 7.4 percent compared to 2023 and 17 percent since 2019 – marking the highest growth rate last year among the world’s top three airports (Atlanta, Dubai and DFW),” explained the airport’s announcement of the achievement.
With increased traffic comes increased inconvenience in some cases. According to a September report from Travel and Leisure, DFW may see many people come and go, but not enough of them do so in a timely manner.
“A flight delay can be a traveler’s worst nightmare, and a new report revealed some airports are more delay-prone than others,” the article notes. “The worst offender for on-time departures of major airports across the United States was Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), which had an on-time rate of just 71.1 percent, according to the 2025 Bureau of Transportation Statistics from January through May.”
No matter what, we here at the Observer hope you, dear reader, do not end up like the tagline from the Turkey Day classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which reads: “What he really wanted was to spend Thanksgiving with his family. What he got was three days with the turkey.”
