Over the 2025 holidays – between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day – a staggering 32.5 million seats are scheduled to depart US airports. This is 2.4% more than last year and represents more than three million departures a day.
According to research from online travel marketplace Hopper, some days are busier than others. Unlike Thanksgiving, where there is a single busiest day to fly, the whole of the festive period is expected to see high volumes of travelers, although Hopper suggested some days that could be quieter.
The company said, “To avoid the crowds this year, plan to travel on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and again over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.” As there are fewer flights on those days, it would follow that the airport would be less busy.
But are there any other red flag days in the mix, or any days that would be better to travel? We crunched the numbers from TSA throughput in recent years to find out.
The best days to fly during the holidays
The absolute best day to fly during the holidays is Christmas Day. For the last three years, December 25 has been one of the quietest travel days of the period, with almost 400,000 fewer TSA passes than the average. But who wants to spend the big day in airports?
If you’d prefer to spend Christmas Day elsewhere, consider flying on Christmas Eve. Passenger traffic was significantly down last year, with 433,000 fewer people traveling than the average. However, this was likely because December 23 and 24 in 2023 were a weekend, so there was a spike in travelers on Friday 22 as everyone finished work and dashed off for the holidays.
In 2022 and 2021, Christmas Eve saw a good quarter of a million fewer passengers than the festive average, so if you don’t mind last-minute travel, it could be a good bet. However, Hopper warns that last-minute airfare prices have already started to rise, up 10% in the last five weeks. Domestic return trips are averaging $371, 8% more than Christmas 2023.
The New Year period is also quiet for travel, with most people seemingly getting where they’re going before January kicks in. New Year’s Eve is traditionally the quietest, down by 260,000 passengers on average for the past three years. New Year’s Day is typically quieter too, but there’s another travel spike on January 2, so try to avoid that.
The worst days to fly over Christmas
The very worst days for flying over the festive period are almost always during the week before the big day. In 2021, 2.2 million passengers passed through TSA checkpoints on Thursday, December 23, while in 2022, both the Wednesday and Thursday before Christmas Day saw more than 2.3 million travelers. Wednesday, December 21, 2022, was the busiest day in all of December.
Last year, a record 2.8 million passengers were screened at TSA checkpoints on Friday, December 22. That day was only slightly more than the 2.6 million screened on both Thursday 21 and Saturday 23.
This year, Christmas falls on a Wednesday, so we can expect the whole of the weekend before the event to be mega busy in US airports. Several sources are predicting Friday, December 20 to be the busiest day for air travel, although there’s no doubt it will be busy right across that weekend.
Flying home for Christmas early is the best option
Perhaps the boat has already sailed on that piece of advice for this year, but in general, according to TSA statistics, flying at least 10 days before Christmas Day can pay off if you’re keen on a quieter experience.
In all three most recent years, the middle of the week before the weekend before Christmas has been less busy. Wednesday, December 14, 2021, saw only 1.6 million passengers, Tuesday, December 13, 2022, saw 1.8 million, and Tuesday, December 12, 2023, just 1.9 million passengers were screened, the lowest number in December.
In terms of getting away again, New Year’s Eve can’t come highly recommended enough, as one of the lowest days for screening the past three years running. If you plan to wait until January, avoid the 2nd like the plague as all previous years have seen a significant spike in screenings. By January 4, traffic had just about returned to normal, so it might pay to wait.