Delta Unveils Record-Breaking Thanksgiving Travel Numbers

Image: Delta employee tagging a checked bag. (photo courtesy of Delta Air Lines)
Image: Delta employee tagging a checked bag. (photo courtesy of Delta Air Lines)
Donald Wood
by Donald Wood
Last updated: 8:20 AM ET, Tue November 27, 2018

The Thanksgiving holiday travel period is one of the busiest of the year, and Delta Air Lines announced Monday that it flew more than 2.3 million customers between Wednesday and Sunday.

Overall, Delta operated 23,114 flights around the world during the Thanksgiving holiday travel period, including an estimated 646,000 passengers Sunday, an all-time record for the month of November.

To accommodate the record number of travelers, Delta operated 5,986 flights Sunday, about 800 more than an average Sunday in November.

The number is close to the carrier's peak summer day, which totaled 6,091 flights on July 20.

Delta and its regional carriers also remained cancellation free Wednesday through Saturday, but the airline had around 50 flights impacted by the winter storm that caused delays and cancellations across the Midwest, including in Chicago and Kansas City.

Even with the impacted flights Sunday, Delta still maintained a completion factor (the measure of scheduled flights that were not canceled) of 99.77 percent and an on-time arrival score of 70.3 percent from Wednesday to Sunday.


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